N/LODERN 



Battles of Trenton 



History of New Jersey's Politics ai^'d 

Legislation from the Year 1868 

TO the Year 1894. 



WILLIAM EDGAR SACKETT. 



22 IG^&p^^'^^^?^ 



TRENTON, N. J. : 

John L. Murphy, Printer. 

1895. 



3^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1895, by 

WILLIAM E. SACKETT, 
In tlie office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



TO THE THOUSANDS 

OF MY 

PERSONAL FRIENDS IN NEW JERSEY 

WHOSE 

PARTIALITY HAS MADE ITS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE, 

THIS VOLUME 

IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 

[j^ HE story traced in these pages is that of the most im- 
portant, interesting and eventful quarter century, take 
it all in all, in the history of New Jersey. It is one 
view — only my view, if you please — of the origin, the 
rise and the decay of a political dynasty, so to speak. Old mas- 
ters pass out of sight in the earlier chapters; the new masters who 
forced them oif the field of action pass out of sight in the closing 
<5hapters. It was not the purpose, when the work was first con- 
templated, to present the rounded story of an era in politics and 
legislation. I expected merely to lay before the reader my 
rather desultory observations of the spring and current and 
movement of public affairs during the years when I was on 
hand with my note-book — to describe events and chat about the 
men who shaped them. But the inexorable tread of events was 
fashioning the sequel to my story even while I was penning it ; 
and, without anticipating it, I find myself the accidental histo- 
rian of an Epoch — and of an Epoch, too, of more than passing 
interest to Jerseymen. 

Nor alone in its political phases is the quarter century epochal. 
It is the story of an epoch in development and progress as well. 
The quarter century has seen disturbing controversies set at rest, 
and the relations of the State to her subjects definitely settled 
upon lasting lines. It has seen the schools made free, a riparian 
policy defined and enforced, the yoke of the old monopolies that 
made the Commonwealth a by- word in the mouth of the nations 
thrown off, the corporations that defied her sovereignty brought 
within the reach of the tax-gatherer, her system of legislation 
fundamentally reconstructed, great public buildings reared — and 
great things begun and accomplished in all directions. 

(5) 



6 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

The labor I have put upon the pages which cover the story 
of this eventful epoch has been especially grateful to me, 
because, from the encouragement the public men of New Jersey 
gave me when I first suggested the work, I feel as though I had 
been especially commissioned by them to tell it for them. I 
trust that I have discharged the commission with becoming 
candor and conscientiousness, and that, now that the fruit of 
their partiality is before them, they will see no reason to repent 
of the selection. 

It is but just that I should add that in the work I have thus 
undertaken and completed, my brother, Clarence, has rendered 
me valuable assistance. 



CHAPTER I. 

Which is in the Nature of an Introduction, and, Though Ancient 
History, Should be Read for a Full Comprehen- 
sion OF the Chapters Which Follow. 




Where was, it is needless to say, a period in the history of 
fi] the State of New Jersey when her territory was a wil- 
P derness. New York had built up a population and a 
promising settlement had formed at Philadelphia, before 
New Jersey's woodlands were invaded by the axe of the pioneer. 
Though the Commonwealth lay between these two rapidly-grow- 
ing communities, her progress and development were noticeably 
slow; and the hope of assisting her growth by artificial methods 
prompted her leading men to tempt enterprises likely to aid her, 
with the most glittering allurements she had to offer. The old- 
time stage-coach, with its changes of horses and drivers at the end 
of every ten-mile run, that spent a whole day in making the dis- 
tance between the booming municipalities at either end of her, 
was hailed as a great boon by the pastoral people who had built 
their cabins upon her soil; and it did, indeed, give an impulse to 
settlement. But it was all too feeble a one ; and when a party of pro- 
gressive capitalists talked about opening up her territory with a 
railroad crossing her from the Delaware river line to Raritan bay, 
and running a new machine called a locomotive over it, the people 
went wild with joy, and were ready to encourage them by any 
gifts of lands or franchises, and even of money, they saw fit to 
ask, and she found it possible to give. The project became at 
once the almost exclusive topic of gossip and discussion in the 
taverns and at town meetings; and, when the Legislature of 1830 
met, it was everywhere understood that nothing the State could 
do to promote it was to be withheld. Before the session had 
grown many weeks old, the promoters of the enterprise were in 



8 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Trenton consulting with the legislators about the terms upon 
which the State would bargain with them, and when the Legis- 
lature adjourned the new railroad had not only been put in com- 
mission, but had made its own terms with the State authorities. 

The running of a railroad across her surface was at that time 
everything but a remunerative enterprise ; it was doubtful, in- 
deed, if this particular enterprise could ever be made to pay, 
and the projectors were loath to undertake it unless the State 
would guarantee them against the rivalry of other capitalists 
who might be inspired by its success, if it were successful, to 
establish competing lines. And so the company's charter con- 
ferred a monopoly of all the service between New York and 
Philadelphia upon it ; and, because the imposition of the tax 
upon its property would take from its treasury some of the 
money needed to carry the enterprise forward to success, it was 
exempted from a large part of the public burdens. It was to 
pay a trifling transit duty into the State treasury — and not even 
that till it had become a dividend-earning concern. 

The point from which these enterprising builders proposed to 
start their road was known as Camden — then a mere name given 
by courtesy to a railroad shed. The point to which they pro- 
posed to run was South Amboy, on the eastern shore of the 
State ; thus the new venture came to be known as the Camden 
and Amboy Railroad. From Amboy, New York was to be 
reached by boat. At that time Perth Amboy, fronting on a 
broad bay that afforded exceptional harbor facilities, was ex- 
pected to outstrip New York and was looked upon as the com- 
ing metropolis of the country. The projectors of the railroad 
would have made this promising locality their terminal but for 
the fact that it would be necessary to bridge Raritan bay at a 
great outlay of money; and so, as the more accessible, South 
Amboy was chosen. 

The company was immediately organized, and a few years 
later, what is now claimed to be the first locomotive ever used 
for railroad traffic in the country, was put upon the rails at 
Bordentown. During the Columbian Exhibition of 1893, at 
Chicago, this primitive contrivance was taken out of the shops 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 9 

of the now monster corporation on the Hackensack meadows, at 
Jersey City, and furbished up for exhibition. Ambitious to 
display the whole train as she had been equipped for her first 
trip from Bordentown, the railroad officials sent agents all over 
the State to hunt up the two passenger coaches that she had 
drawn. Among the rubbish of an old shop up in Sussex, one 
was found ; the other, minus its wheels, was doing service as a 
hen-coop at one of the old towns in Middlesex. They were 
mounted on trucks, and, gay with flags and bunting, were sped 
behind the locomotive across the country to Chicago. It was 
unique and a curiosity, and the train was hailed by great throngs 
at every depot past which she rolled. 

To return from this digression, the charter of the company 
which resurrected this curiosity of its primitive days for the 
amusement and instruction of the people sixty-four years after 
it had instituted the system of locomotive travel, required that 
the construction of the road should be commenced within two 
years and completed within nine. The State reserved the right 
till January 1st, 1831, to subscribe for one-quarter of the capital 
stock, and the privilege, for three years at the expiration of 
thirty years, of taking the works at an appraisement. The con- 
struction of another railroad, with terminals within three miles 
of its termini, was to free the company from the payment even 
of its transit duties. The act of 1831 made this monopoly privi- 
lege even more stringent by enacting that no other railroad 
should be constructed across the State within three miles of its 
line until the expiration of the nine years limited for its comple- 
tion. In exchange for this exclusive privilege the railroad com- 
pany gave the State a thousand shares of its stock, with divi- 
dends, but with the understanding that, upon the construction, 
by authority of the State or of the United States, of another 
railroad between New York and Philadelphia, the shares should 
be given back. It may be said incidentally that, notwithstanding 
the fact that the State has since chartered many railroads, these 
shares are still among her assets. By the time the first propo- 
sitions for railroads were made, the shares had become exception- 
ally valuable, and one of the weapons the railroad company used 



10 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



for the perpetuation of its monopoly was its threat to force their 
return in pursuance of the arrangement under which they were 
taken ; but the continued possession of the shares by the State 
was purchased by the extension of other privileges to the rail- 
road company.* 

It was not long after the Camden and Amboy monopoly had 
been established by the State before an equally-important move- 
ment was started on the 
water front at Jersey 
City. Jersey City was 
the point on the Jersey 
shore that was most 
available for railroad pur- 
poses, because it was di- 
rectly opposite the heart 
of the metropolis. At 
that time it was little 
more than a neck of land 
projecting into the water 
at about the place where 
the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road ferries are now 
located. It was known 
as Paulus Hoeck, and 
through the keen foresight of Alexander Hamilton had, away 
back in 1804, become the property of "The Associates of the 
Jersey Company." From an interesting history, prepared in 
1883 by Mr. Charles B. Thurston — for over twenty years, and 
even at the time of this writing. Secretary of the Associates — and 

* It was thought this was done quite as much for the purpose of assisting the 
completion of the roads as for the investment. The State parted, as time 
went along, with most of the stock that thus came into its hands, and always 
derived a handsome revenue from it ; but General Robert F. Stockton, son of 
old Commodore Stockton, and who was for three years Comptroller of the 
State, is authority for the statement that if the State treasury had held all of 
the stock which it has from time to time exchanged for franchises to railroads 
the dividend from the stock would by this time have paid all the expenses of 
the State government. 




Charles B. Thurston. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 11 



designed to show the title of the Associates to the shore front, 
the story of the absorption of the valuable water privileges at 
that point is gleaned.* 

The extreme eastern point of the upland at that time was about 
where Warren street runs now— the filling in since done by the 
railroad has extended the solid ground 1,500 to 2,000 feet into 
the Hudson river. Above Paulus Hoeck and below it the shore 
was escalloped by deep coves— that on the north known as 
Aharsimus, a name which the Indians had given to it, and since 
corrupted into Harsimus ; that on the south, called the South 
Cove. The jut of land was the property of Cornelius Van Vorst, 
Anthony Dye, Richard Varick and Richard Radcliffe. With 
his wonderful business eye Hamilton saw the commercial future 
of their holdings, and he framed the bill incorporating the Asso- 
ciates of the Jersey Company for ils purchase. Notable names 
were among those of these Associates. Old Governor Penning- 
ton, Judge Aaron Ogden, Isaac H. Williamson, whose son Benja- 
min was afterwards one of the famous Chancellors of the State ; 
General Cummings, of Newark, and Israel Condit, of Newark, 
were some of them. By their charter the Associates were given 
the privilege of owning not only the upland but the land under 
water beyond it, and of improving it. 

It was Hamilton's idea that the particular value of this acqui- 
sition lay in its availability for ferriage purposes ; and, so that the 
Associates might enjoy an absolute and undisputed monopoly of 
transportation across the river from that point forever, he pre- 
pared a form for their use in the sale of their acquired upland 
which reserved to the Associates always the enjoyment of the ferry 
privileges. Every deed given by them to purchasers of any part 
of the land expressly forbids the use of it by the purchasers for 
ferry purposes. By this far-seeing precaution the famous Secre- 
tary secured to the Associates for all time an exclusive monopoly 
of the right to use the shore front for the transportation of pas- 
sengers from Jersey City at any point between Harsimus and 

* Those who are interested in more than is here taken from Mr. Thurston's 
narrative, will find the whole narrative reproduced in an appendix at the end 
of this book. 



12 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the South Cove. A tavern keeper on the water front established 
a sort of a ferry between the Hoeck and New York, and paid 
rental to the Associates for many years before the value of it for 
the larger purposes of commerce developed. 

At about the time that the Camden and Amboy began its strug- 
gle to establish communication between New York and Philadel- 
phia, Dudley S. Gregory and Russel H. Nevius conceived the idea 
of extending a railroad line from the inn-man's ferry westward into 
the State. This eventuated in the organization of the New Jersey 
Railroad and Transportation Company, whose route was by stage 
over Bergen Hill to the Hackensack slope, and thence by train 
onward to New Brunswick. As the concern grew busy and 
wealthy, the necessity of securing control of the ferry privileges 
on the water front became apparent. The one way of accomplish- 
ing this was by securing a controlling interest in the stock of the 
Jersey Associates. The directory of the Railroad and Transpor- 
tation Company sent out its agents to buy blocks of stock wherever 
they could. Mr. Gregory was among those who assisted them, 
and in the course of time they had secured from a number of 
the Associates a sufficient number of the shares — at $430 per 
share — to put them in practical possession of the Associates' ferry 
monopoly. In course of time a serpentine roadbed was blasted 
through Bergen Hill ; the stage-coach service was abandoned, 
and trains were run direct to the water front. 

The attention of the Camden and Amboy was soon directed 
to this new enterprise by two circumstances. The New Jersey 
Railroad and Transportation Company offered a more direct 
communication with New York than that which the old road 
had established at South Amboy. The new road was, besides, 
coming into uncomfortable competition with it for some of its 
traffic. It was not long before a proposition for a lease, or a 
consolidation, or a merger, was sent out, and eventually the new 
road went under the wing of the older company. This shrewd 
move confirmed the Camden and Amboy in the enjoyment of its 
transportation monopoly between New York and Philadelphia. 
By acquiring possession of all the water front available for ferry 
purposes opposite the heart of the metropolis, it was enabled to 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 13 

exclude any competiDg line from reaching New York as directly; 
and for many years the chief struggle between it and lines that 
sought competition with it was due to their efforts to break its 
monopoly at this point, and secure a foothold near its own. 

About the time the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation 
Company projected its line, a road connecting Trenton and 
Philadelphia was laid out and chartered, and this, too, entered 
into traffic arrangements with the Camden and Amboy; thus the 
old monopoly came into control of a continuous line direct from 
New York to Philadelphia — over the New Jersey Railroad and 
Transportation road from New York to New Brunswick, over 
the Camden and Amboy from New Brunswick to Trenton, and 
from Trenton over the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad into 
Philadelphia. The three linked roads came to be known as the 
United Railroad Companies of New Jersey, and Ashbel Welch 
was the first President of the consolidated concerns. With a 
closer communication between the two big cities it had started to 
serve, the Camden and Amboy abandoned its depot at South 
Amboy for passenger purposes, and carried all of its riders to the 
ferry at Jersey City, where they were within five minutes' sail 
of New York. 

The establishment of this through route was regarded as so 
large a boom to the prosperity of New Jersey — so important a 
step toward the development of its resources — that the Legis- 
lature, in authorizing the consolidation of the three companies 
under the title of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation 
Company, agreed to absolutely prohibit the construction of any 
competing line between New York and Philadelphia, except 
with their consent • and they bound themselves to see that the 
transit duties, which they paid in lieu of taxes, and the divi- 
dends on the State's shares of the stock, did not fall below the 
munificent total of $30^000 per year. 

It was many years before either the Delaware, Lackawanna 
and Western or the New Jersey Central found a way of extend- 
ing their lines to tide- water at the metropolis, and during that 
time they were forced to enter into traffic arrangements with 
the favored company. The Jersey Central, which had estab- 



44 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

lished a line that was trying to make its way to Easton, Pa., fed 
into the road of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation 
Company at Elizabeth, and paid toll on all of its passengers for 
the privilege of riding them over the rails of the New Jersey 
Railroad and Transportation Company to New York City ; but 
it was all the time reaching out for a water front equal to that 
of the New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company at 
Jersey City, and commanding as easy access to New York. 
Through the Jersey Associates, the New Jersey Railroad and 
Transportation Company had, as has been already narrated, 
secured possession of all the available ferry sites on the Jersey 
City shore, and if a contiguous ferry was to be secured, there 
was no way to get it except by making the ground. John 
Taylor Johnston, who was the moving spirit in the New Jersey 
Central Railroad, inspected the Mud Flats, with their shallow 
overlay of water, in the South Cove, and concluded that hun- 
dreds of acres might be redeemed from the river at that point 
by solid filling, and turned into the mammoth railroad yard his 
company desired. The Cove cut deep into the shore, and it was 
easy to see that an enormous outlay of time and money would 
be required to make new land, out to deep water ; but he and 
his associates undertook it. For years and years scow loads of 
the foul refuse of the New York streets were dumped upon the 
Flats, to the peril of the health, as well as to the discomfort, of 
the residents of Jersey City, whose homes, invaded by the odor, 
were made almost uninhabitable. In the face of all their pro- 
-tests he persisted with the work till the land began to show 
above the water ; and thousands of acres stolen from the river, 
and added to the area of Jersey City, gave the railroad which 
he managed terminal facilities as accessible to New York as 
those the Camden and Amboy had acquired. 

The Morris and Essex likewise found it impracticable for 
many years after it had been incorporated to make a direct com- 
munication with the roadbed of the joint companies, and the 
coaches containing its passengers for New York were, on reach- 
ing Newark, unhitched from its locomotives at the point where 
its Broad street station is now located, drawn by horses through 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 15 

Broad street to Centre, and down Centre to the station of the 
New Jersey Railroad and Transportation Company, and there 
attached to a train to be drawn into Jersey City. 

The Morris and Essex Railroad was the pet project of Com- 
modore Stevens, of Hoboken. The Commodore was a conspicu- 
ous figure among the engineers of the country, and before his 
death, earned the reputation of being an inventor of marked 
originality. The Stevens Battery, which provoked endless 
newspaper talk for many years, was the work of his hands and 
reflected much genius, though at the end it proved to be an 
elephant on his hands. He was the founder of the family 
of Stevens whose baronial estate at Castle Point, in Hoboken, 
became known to all the society folks of this section of the 
country. In its earliest history, he owned the larger part of 
the territory upon which the city of Hoboken has since been 
built, and he was looking forward to the time when it would 
be possible to bring his own road to the water front there. 

Bergen Hill towered between this water front and his eastern 
terminus, out beyond the Hackensack Meadows. The piercing 
or crossing of this height presented serious engineering difficul- 
ties that the Commodore hesitated to solve. But he had it in 
his mind to attack them some day, and in the hope of making 
his road, when it should be carried to the water front, a success- 
ful competitor, he was bitterly against the continued extension 
of monopoly rights to the Camden and Amboy Company. The 
Amboy managers found in him a foeman worthy of their steel, 
and they deemed it wise to placate him. The result was the 
making of this traffic arrangement that carried his cars from 
Newark to Jersey City over the Amboy line, and an under- 
standing that when he should be ready to run his locomotives 
under the crest of Bergen Heights, the Amboy managers would 
make no active opposition. 

The construction of a tunnel through Bergen Hill was under- 
taken some years later by a party of capitalists promoting the con- 
struction of the Erie Railroad ; and at about the same time there 
was friction between Commodore Stevens and the New Jersey 
Railroad and Transportation Company's officials concerning the 
division of the toll money taken at the Jersey City ferry. The 



16 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Erie tunnel projectors became cramped financially in the prosecu- 
tion of their enterprise, and applied to Commodore Stevens for 
aid. He made the loan of $107,000 needed for the completion 
of the tunnel on the engagement that his road should also use it. 
When daylight was finally carried through the hill, he withdrew 
from his traflSc arrangement with the New Jersey Railroad and 
Transportation Company, and for years his road and the Erie 
jointly used the tunnel. 

Relations between these two new allies became strained in 
the last year of Governor Randolph's administration, over a 
six-foot track, which had been substituted for one of the four-and- 
a-half-foot tracks with which the tunnel was fitted. The Morris 
road insisted upon its right to use those rails as well as the other 
road, and the Erie resisted. Determined to make the connec- 
tion, the Morris road folks sent a squad of laborers one night ta 
insert a " frog," at the west mouth of the tunnel, that would 
admit trains from their road to the disputed rails. One of the 
most exciting railroad wars in the late history of the State was 
the result. " Jim " Fisk, the ruling genius in the Erie Rail- 
road, had got wind of the movement, and when the Morris and 
Essex laborers appeared upon the scene to lay the " frog " they 
found their work blocked. Erie locomotives, the heaviest of 
them, had been steamed up to the point of attack, and lay over 
the very spot where they had expected to work. A pitched 
battle between the laborers and the locomotive hands occurred 
during the night, and, the train hands being reinforced by great 
gangs of Erie laborers, a serious riot, that was not quelled till 
Governor Randolph called out the militia, ensued. The Gover- 
nor himself was largely interested in the Morris and Essex Rail- 
road ; and the State Guard, with their rifles and a cannon or two, 
kept the Erie brigade at bay until the "frog" had been inserted. 
The traffic of the two roads increased so largely as time went on 
that the one tunnel was not enough to accommodate them, and 
soon after the close of the famous " frog " war the Morris road 
people made a sale of their tunnel rights to the Erie, and blew a 
tunnel for their own use through another part of the hill. 

What has been written shows that the little enterprise of the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 17 

Camden and Amboy Company, which the State so carefully 
nursed in the hope that it might be successful and the fear that 
it would not be, grew rapidly to prosperity and wealth. Popu- 
lation followed the line of its rails, settlements sprang up in 
the wilderness as fast as locomotives pushed through the forests, 
and its whole route from Philadelphia to New York became 
dotted with attractive and prosperous towns. 

It became one of the main thoroughfares of traffic between 
New York and all points South and West, and grew with almost 
magical speed into an enormous and wealthy corporation. Its 
early alliance with the Legislature of the State, and the popular 
enthusiasm with which its coming had been hailed, and the 
State's habit of conceding to it, for the purpose of increasing 
her own prosperity, whatever of privilege or franchise or 
exemption, or even monopoly, it asked, made it arrogant and 
aggressive, and it soon came to be recognized as the power 
behind the throne in the control of all the affairs of the Com- 
monwealth. It went into the counties, picked out its own 
nominees for places in the Senate and Assembly and secured 
their election to the seats for which they stood. The ambitious 
politician, hopeful for public honors, had first to make his peace 
with this rapidly-growing monopoly and to secure its favor and 
consent to his canvass. Such a thing as a candidate announcing 
his opposition to the railroad company and surviving the elec- 
tion was almost unheard of in State politics. Once in a while 
a man, permitted to reach a seat on the assumption that he 
would be favorable to its schemes, would show a disposition to 
curb its greedy reach for power. With its rich treasury it 
brought him into line with the majority of his fellows, 
and never failed to punish him for his temerity by defeating 
his re-election to his seat at the next poll. The legislation 
proposed for the people was all scrutinized at the companies' 
offices in Trenton and allowed to go through if the company 
was favorable or indifferent, but its disapproval doomed it to 
certain defeat. It selected the Governors of the State, picked 
out the men who were to go to Congress and named the United 
States Senators. So absolute was its control of all departments 

2 



18 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of the State government that the State itself came to be known 
derisively among the people of other States as the State of 
Camden and Amboy. It went into the cities and towns and 
controlled Councils and Mayors with the same iron hand. It 
absorbed property of great value everywhere, and taking it out 
of the ratables increased the tax burdens of the community 
from which it was withdrawn. There never was a more com- 
plete master anywhere of the destinies of a State than was this 
monster monopoly of the affairs of New Jersey. Its enterprise 
reached out in a thousand different directions, and there came a 
time when the State that had taken the corporation to its bosom 
as a child began to fear it as a master. 



CHAPTER II. 

Which Treats of the First Movements to Dislodge the Camden 

AND Amboy Monopoly, and Discloses Incidentally the 

Influence the Lease of the Old Lines to the 

Pennsylvania Kailroad Company had Upon 

the Progress of the Battle for a 

Competing Line. 




f HESE introductory explanations are made, because, all 
ij through the work upon which I am now engaged, the 
railroads, and especially the Camden and Amboy and its 
successor, the Pennsylvania, present themselves as im- 
portant factors in the control of State affairs. The success that had 
attended the Camden and Amboy's operation naturally enough 
roused the ambition of other capitalists for like enterprises, and as 
its growth was due almost entirely to the fact that it controlled the 
traffic between two important cities, the chief aim of rival operators 
was to make a line parallel with it. Because it had acquired quite 
as advantageous a tide- water terminal at Jersey City, just south of 
the Joint Companies' terminal, all of these rival organizations 
looked to the Jersey Central Railroad to admit them to New 
York. The Jersey Central had, soon after reaching its water 
front, attempted to establish a competing line by the extension 
of its New Jersey Southern branch out through Red Bank and 
Toms River towards Philadelphia. But the route was so cir- 
cuitous and the time of travel so long as to defeat the purpose 
its projectors had in view in building it. Senator Torrey, whose 
father, John Torrey, was its most enthusiastic backer, was 
especially conspicuous in promoting the passage of its charter 
under the name originally of the Raritan and Delaware Bay 
Railroad. Manchester, down in the Jersey pines, was selected 
as its central business station, and the establishment of its car 
shops there built the town into quite a flourishing community. 

(19) 



20 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



To secure the means of prosecuting the enterprise, Torrey made 
a loan through Brown Brothers, of New York, with the Bank 
of England for $450,000, and as the money was advanced on 
woodland that was of scarcely any value the. loan became famous 
in the history of financial operations. The decadence of the 
railroad robbed Manchester of her early glory ; the shops were 
closed and the homes deserted, and a foreclosure to force the 
settlement of the mortgage finally became necessary. The heirs 
of the Torrey estate bought in the property, however, to protect 
the titles of those who still made their homes in the town. 

It became apparent, immediately after the Southern Railroad 
had entered upon business, that it would never answer for a 
competing line; and larger hopes were built upon the possibility 
of extending the Central Company's main line onward to the 
Quaker City. Till Somerville was reached the main line 
pointed straight at Philadelphia and there it veered westward 
toward Easton. It succeeded in pushing its way Philadelphia- 
ward as far as Bound Brook and there its progress was blocked. 
From the other direction, a corporation known at that time 
variously as the National Line, and the Air Line, but sub- 
sequently absorbed into what is now known as the Reading 
Railroad, had extended its line northward from Philadelphia to 
a point on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware river about 
opposite Trenton. All the ambitious projectors of rival roads 
saw that the linking of these two roads by a little spur extend- 
ing from Trenton to Bound Brook would complete the much- 
sought through route between the two important cities that fed 
the Camden and Amboy. For four or five years the State was 
torn by the dissensions between the Camden and Amboy owners 
and these rival promoters for a franchise that would authorize 
the laying of rails over this disputed territory, and the little 
section of the State that lay between the Bound Brook end of 
the Central and the Trenton end of the Air Line became famed 
all over the country as a battle-ground of the railroad giants. 
At each session of the Legislature, for years, the promoters of 
the rival lines urged their claims upon the Senators and Assem- 
blymen, and the Camden and Amboy monopolists sent them 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 21 

home as often with a good deal more experience but a good deal 
less money than they had started out with. 

They succeeded in making much of public talk about the 
closeness of the relations that existed between the Camden and 
Amboy and the State, however ; and the newspapers felt that 
they were scoring a great point against the Camden and Am- 
boy 's domination when they described the system of transit 
duties which it paid into the State Treasury in lieu of taxes, 
as a tax upon the passengers and declared that whatever the 
Camden and Amboy contributed toward the support of the State 
was taken out of the pockets of its New York and Phila- 
delphia patrons. The transit duty system was easily made un- 
popular in New York and Philadelphia by its presentation 
in this light, and in 1869 Governor Randolph sent a special 
message to the Legislature in which he advised the substitution 
of another and better system for it. 

" Provision should be made," he wrote, " for the establish- 
ment of a just and uniform rate of taxation upon all railroad 
and canal companies, subject to such changes in the rate as the 
Legislature may direct. * * * I am convinced that the present 
mode of obtaining revenue is inconsistent with the spirit of our 
people, the more enlightened and just modes of taxation experience 
has developed, and unequal, also, in its operations upon our citi- 
zens. The operation of the system, too, is either persistently 
misunderstood or willfully misrepresented by the citizens of other 
States." 

As a result of these recommendations, a bill was introduced 
into the Houses, and whipped through both of them in a 
single day, imposing a tax of one-half of one per cent, upon the 
cost of the Camden and Amboy Railroad, " till such time as a 
law imposing a general railroad tax should be passed." 

The Legislature of 1870 saw an attempt made to connect the 
National line with the Central, by the introduction into both 
Houses at the same time of a bill granting a franchise for a road 
between Millstone and Trenton. Tracks between these two 
points would have completed the Philadelphia and New York 
connection, but the act authorizing their laying was presented to 



22 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the members as for the construction of merely a little local road. 
Assemblyman Clark, who was evidently a Camden and Amboy 
spokesman on the floor, made announcement of its larger scope 
when he described it as designed to secure a continuous road 
from Philadelphia to New York, " for a corporation chartered 
by Pennsylvania in which the State of New Jersey had no par- 
ticular interest." After it had been defeated by an adverse report 
in the Assembly, Assemblyman Winton, of Bergen, backed by 
Bevans, of Hudson, attempted to secure a reeonsideration ; but 
Leon Abbett, who was Speaker of the House at the time, stepped 
down from the dais and opposed the reconsideration on the ground 
that " the idea underlying it was a train flying across New Jersey 
from New York to Philadelphia in one hour and fifty minutes 
without stopping at a single one of the intervening Jersey towns 
or villages," and urged this local objection to a corporation that 
proposed to use the State only for a convenience with such fer- 
vor that the attempt to reconsider failed by even a larger vote 
than that which had sustained the adverse report. 

The companion bill, that had been placed on the Senate files, 
was met there by the introduction, under Camden and Amboy 
auspices, as a foil, of a bill chartering the Mercer and Somerset 
Railway Company -between precisely the same points. Such 
well-known Camden and Amboy men as Ashbel Welch, Robert 
F. Stockton, John G. Stevens and A. L. Dennis were among the 
incorporators ; and its Camden and Amboy origin was further 
revealed by the clause which gave to the Camden and Amboy 
stockholders power to subscribe to the stock. The special allure- 
ment with which the promoters of the Millstone and Trenton 
Railway bill tried to tempt the State into granting the charter, 
was the offer of half a million dollars to the State treasury in 
exchange for it. Senator Little, of Monmouth, who thought 
that the State of New Jersey should not sell these franchises, 
aided by Senator Taylor, of Essex, who thought that a woman 
should as soon sell her virtue, attacked this particular part of 
the bill, and had it stricken out of it. The fate of the measure 
was sealed from that day onward to the close of the session. Its 
promoters realized that if they could not induce the State to give 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 23 

up the franchise for half a million, they certainly could not per- 
suade her to make the gift for nothing, and, both Houses having 
thus set their faces against it, the attempt to build the rival road 
was for the year abandoned. 

Meanwhile the Camden and Amboy control had undergone a 
change that robbed it of half the local argument with which it 
had been armed. The joint companies had leased all their lines 
to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, a corporation whose 
directory was quite as full of foreigners as the directory of any 
of the competing roads that had sought to use the soil of the 
State. Jersey Legislatures had excused themselves for protect- 
ing the Camden and Amboy against all comers, on the ground 
that she was managed by Jerseymen, and devoted to the promo- 
tion of New Jersey's growth while these outside concerns were 
the projects of men who were not to the manor born, who cared 
nothing for New Jersey, except so far as she could contribute to 
the comfort of travel between the two cities outside of her, and 
who, as Abbett had said on the floor of the Assembly Chamber, 
did not propose to even stop their trains anywhere within her 
limits for the accommodation of her citizens. The argument, 
based on State pride and State development, that had been effective 
against these foreign rivals of the road which the State herself 
had nursed into strength, was lost the moment the State's own 
road, as it were, passed out of the hands of Jerseymen into a 
control that was no less foreign. It was even urged that the 
arrogance and arbitrariness of the foreign concern that had taken 
possession of the Camden and Amboy properties should be 
checked and punished by the chartering of its competitors and 
the impairment of its business. The loss of popularity among 
Jerseymen, due to the changed status of the joint companies, not 
only encouraged the rival lines to fight with the more vigor for 
their charters, but was reflected in the greater difficulty the old 
monopoly experienced in defeating them. Appeals to State pride 
and State interest were vain, and the corrupting influence of 
money and lobby was called in to replace them. 



CHAPTER III. 

"Which Treats of the Horseshoe Assembly District Gerrymander, 

OF Walsh's Nomination for Governor and of His Defeat 

BY Joel Parker, with an Incidental Sketch of 

the Men who Made Up the State House 

Autocracy of that Day. 



IGHT was lost of these absorbing railroad rivalries in the 



_^ 




political excitements into which the State was plunged 
when they seemed about to reach a culmination. The 
Legislature of 1869 was controlled in both branches by 
the Democrats. The Federal Government was preparing to make 
the usual decennial count of the people in the nation in 1870, and 
it was to fall to the lot of the Legislature of the following year, 
1871, to make a re-apportionment of Assemblymen among the 
counties on the basis of the State's new population figures — that is, 
the Constitution devolved upon it the function of fixing the num- 
ber each county should hold of the sixty seats in the Lower House, 
and of marking out the boundaries of the districts from which the 
men who were to fill them should be chosen. The possession 
of the Legislature in re-apportionment year was counted nine 
points of the law. It gave the party in control an opportunity, 
by juggling with the geography of the State, to perpetuate its 
supremacy. The votes could be so apportioned and the district 
lines so arranged as to aid its candidates and handicap those of 
its opponents. 

The Democrats were in control of both branches in 
1870. To assure themselves of the majority in the Assem- 
bly of 1871 they planned a series of changes in district lines 
that were expected to be favorable to the chances of their candi- 
dates. The warring railroads struggled as hard as the party 
managers to turn the new apportionment to their own advantage. 
It was their desire also to see the districts arranged in a way 
(24) 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 25 

that would enable them to secure most easily the election of 
their own men to the chamber. The Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company, with a directory in sympathy with the Republican 
party, was opposed to the anticipation by the Legislature of 
1870, of the decennial re-apportionment of 1871. The con- 
ditions of the time were not unfavorable to Republican success, 
even in New Jersey, in the fall, and there was an idea abroad 
that if these partisan anticipations of the redistricting era could 
be balked in the Legislature of 1870 it might be possible to pro- 
duce at Trenton the following winter (1871) a Republican Legis- 
lature to make a thorough re-apportionment upon Republican 
lines. The Democratic caucus was all the more eager as a con- 
sequence to have the work done by the Legislature of 1870. 
The redistricting bills were devised and sent to the Clerk's 
desk for enactment. The moment they made their appearance 
some of the Democratic members began to make protests against 
the way their particular districts had been laid out, and during all 
the session, up to within a few hours of its close, they contended 
and disputed over the final shape the bills should take. Speaker 
Abbett was severely criticised on the suspicion that he was wink- 
ing at these delays, but in the last hours of the session he forced 
them to the House calendar. When they were offered for pas- 
sage but fifty- seven of the sixty members were in attendance. 
Herman D. Busch, who enjoyed the double distinction of being 
the fattest man in the State and of representing Hoboken in the 
Assembly, and Assemblyman Probasco, of Hunterdon county, 
were absent, and a little handful of the slim Democratic ma- 
jority present were numbered among those who were in the 
opposition. Caleb H. Valentine, of Warren, one of the most 
showy orators of that session ; Assemblyman Samuel Warthman, 
of Camden; Charles C. Grosscup, of Cumberland, and Levi 
French, of Burlington, were of this number. Valentine had 
been making florid speeches in favor of a new county to be 
called Musconetcong, and it was said that he had promised, in 
exchange for Republican votes for his county bill, to cast his 
vote against some, if not all, of the Democratic caucus measures. 
The reasons that influenced the others in their defection are only 



26 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

conjectural, but it did not escape observation that they repre- 
sented counties where the old Camden and Amboy influence had 
always been, and is even to this day, well-nigh supreme. Speaker 
Abbett doubtless knew when he forced them to a vote that they 
were likely to be beaten, but concluding that they might as well 
be slaughtered in the open as secretly smothered to death, he 
insisted upon a roll-call upon them. In the vote, Valentine 
assisted the Republicans to beat two ; Warthman cast his vote 
against two, and French and Grosscup aided in the defeat of a 
third. The result was that the Legislature adjourned, leaving 
to the Republicans this important function if they should cap- 
ture the next Legislature. 

Having escaped the handicap the Legislature of 1870 endeav- 
ored to put upon them, the Republicans went into the campaign 
of the fall with hot zeal. The parties fought with bitter parti- 
sanship for two shining prizes that were to be the rewards of 
victory. It was preordained that the party that controlled the 
re- apportionment would make it with a view to maintaining its 
supremacy for years ; and the Legislature was, besides, to name 
a man to succeed United States Senator Alexander G. Cattell, 
whose term was to expire in the following March. The Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company, eager to command a following that 
would protect it against the encroachments of rival corporations, 
plunged into the campaign as an active ally of the Republicans. 

Thus was returned to Trenton in 1871 a Republican majority 
in both Senate and Assembly. The railroad's supremacy in both 
Houses was so pronounced that the National Railway people felt 
that a fight for a franchise that year would be an almost hopeless 
one, and, after making an exhibition of their teeth, they retired 
from the ground. For a bluff, they attacked the lease of the 
Camden and Amboy property to the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company, and then made a bold display of their own hand by 
asking outright for a charter for the incorportion of the National 
Railway Company. Theretofore, their policy had been to secure 
furtive legislation for a charter that on its face merely put a little 
local line somewhere in commission, but that really, with the 
already-granted charters for other lines, completed its through 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 27 

line to New York. The offering of an act for the direct incor- 
poration of a rival line was only intended, apparently, to keep 
the public interest in the question alive. For the first time since 
the rivalry had begun, the National people had now thrown 
down the glove to the monopoly that controlled the State Legis- 
lature. It was little else, however, at this time, than a notice to 
the Pennsylvania managers that the issue was about to be forced 
upon them. The act was not pressed with any vigor, and the 
close of the Legislature was reached without any special excite- 
ment over it. It named as incorporators, Henry M. Hamilton, 
A. Bailey Clark, Isaac B. Culver, Henry Lewis, Robert B. 
Cabine, Matthew Baird, Jacob Reigel, Samuel K. Wilson, 
Alfred S. Livingston, Charles Smith, Deles E. Culver, James 
Moore, John McGregor, Sidney Dillon, Franklin J. Mallory. 
The accession of the Republicans to power gave them so 
much partisan work to attend to, that this " flyer " of the 
National Railway Company attracted little attention. Besides 
the election of Senator Cattell's successor, and the perfection of 
the redistricting and re-apportionment act to the best partisan 
advantage, they had no end of State offices to bestow upon par- 
tisan favorites, and no end of bills to pass for the delivery into 
Republican hands of the municipal governments all over the 
State. It was the commencement of one of the most disastrous 
revelries of partisanship that the State had ever seen. Before it 
was ended one of the State officers chosen by the joint meeting 
was discovered, when, grey-bearded man as he was, he was 
hunted out of questionable surroundings in Philadelphia a few 
years later, to have wasted upon wine and women close on to a 
hundred thousand dollars of State moneys. One of the Senators 
who, by the government he induced the Legislature to establish 
over the locality he represented, succeeded in making himself a 
powerful local boss, died in the State Prison while undergoing 
a term of imprisonment for robbing the community that trusted 
him. Two cities were driven by the extravagances and corrup- 
tions of the rings the Legislature forced upon them, into bank- 
ruptcy that set them back twenty-five years in growth, and the 
Treasurer of a third, which narrowly escaped the same fate. 



28 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

rushed off to Mexico with sixty thousand dollars of its money, 
aud then paid it all over to a Mexican bandit for protection 
against his pursuers. 

These unworthy rulers acquired this baleful control of 
municipalities by routing the chosen servants of the peo- 
ple from the local places, and replacing them with others 
named in the joint meeting of the two Houses; and in 
order to insure themselves against disturbance, they fastened 
upon the State, through the re- apportionment and redistricting 
that the Legislature of 1870 had left in their hands, a gerry- 
mander of Assembly districts so manifestly unfair that it be- 
came the talk of the nation. The Jersey City " Horseshoe," 
into which the entire Democratic vote of that Democratic city 
was huddled and allowed but a single Assembly vote, while a 
smaller Republican constituency was broken up into a half a 
dozen districts with, of course, a half a dozen Assembly repre- 
sentatives, was one of its products. The voice of the State was 
stifled through it so thoroughly that even when the Democracy 
rolled up a total majority of 15,000 to 18,000 throughout the 
Commonwealth, the Assembly yet showed an overwhelming 
Republican majority. It was so notable a piece of political en- 
gineering that it set the cue for gerrymanders all over the 
country, and was cited as a precedent twenty years later for an 
equally infamous Democratic gerrymander. The questionable 
distinction of introducing this disfranchising enactment falls to 
Senator Torrey, of Ocean. 

The caucus for the United States Senatorship was the one 
reputable proceeding of the Legislature. The names of Cor- 
nelius Walsh, an Englishman of Newark, who had accumulated 
something of a fortune in the manufacture of trunks ; of Cort- 
landt Parker, a noted advocate of the same city, and of Fred- 
erick T. Frelinghuysen, the courtly son of a family already 
famous in the annals of statesmanship, and himself a former At- 
torney-General of the State, were presented. Mr. Parker did 
not show much strength among the members ; Frelinghuysen's 
name and capacity commended him to all hands, but Walsh's 
wealth made him, in spite of his English lineage, a dangerous 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 29 

rival. It was only after Walsh had been bought out of the com- 
petition by the promise of the nomination for the Governor- 
ship in the fall, that the way was opened for Mr. Fre- 
linghuysen's election. Mr. Frelinghuysen was chosen when 
the joint meeting came, over Governor Randolph, whom 
the Democratic caucus had put in nomination against him. 

Thomas N. McCarter, of Newark, was to have been the tem- 
porary chairman of the Republican State Convention that met 
at Trenton in the fall to select the candidate for Governor, but 
he was unable to be present, and General Thomas Van Buren, 
of Hudson, acted in his stead. Edward Bettle, of Camden, 
took the chair when the permanent organization was effected. 
The prospect of Republican success was so alluring that more 
than half a dozen candidates were tempted into the field. Cort- 
landt Parker, Marcus L. Ward, John Hill, Elston Marsh, Theo- 
dore Little and Colonel A. D. Hope appeared in convention as 
competitors for the nomination that had been promised to Walsh. 
Neither of them, however, showed sufficient strength to make 
him a formidable candidate against the Newark trunk-maker, 
and Hoxsey, of Passaic, made an effort to spring General Judson 
Kilpatrick, the dashing cavalryman of the war, upon his fellow- 
delegates. The Republican leaders, who had promised the favor 
of the convention to Walsh, feared that the mention of the 
name of Kilpatrick, who had doubly endeared himself to the 
hearts of Jersey Republicans by his brilliant platform oratory 
and his record as a soldier, would stampede the delegates, and 
their followers endeavored to drown Hoxsey's voice in shouts. 
Half the men in the hall kept tally of the announcement while 
the first ballot was being taken amid breathless excitement, and 
the pledged leaders of the party drew a long sigh of relief when 
they saw that the little soldier from Deckertown had not swept 
the convention away from their candidate. Before the second 
roll-call had been commenced, the frightened managers hurried 
and scurried down the aisles and over benches to beg votes for 
Walsh, and when the tallies were footed up it was found that 
he had been put in nomination. 

The press of the day following the convention disclosed a 



30 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

general conviction that Mr. Walsh's English nativity would 
prove a marked weakness for him at the polls; but it was urged, 
on the other hand, that his prominence in the Methodist Church, 
and his liberal donations to its treasury, would be an element of 
strength for him in the rural districts, where a Methodist is 
sometimes a Democrat. The Democratic party did not fear his 
Methodist alliances half as much as the Republicans had built 
upon them ; but they were discomforted by the eflPect the expendi- 
ture of vast sums of money he was supposed to be ready to 
make upon his campaign might produce in conjunction with the 
generally unsatisfactory prospect of things for the party, and 
they felt that the occasion had come when they must throw aside 
all of their personal preferences, and pave the way for victory 
by presenting the strongest man in their ranks as his competitor. 

Democratic councils had been dominated for years by a coterie 
of bright men whom the irreverent Democratic masses called 
"The State House Ring." Judge Lathrop was one of this 
potential quartette. Ex-Senator Little, who had now become 
the Clerk of the Court of Chancery ; Henry C. Kelsey, 
who became Secretary of State at about the same time, and 
Governor Theodore Randolph were the others. 

Judge Lathrop had been in the wholesale dry goods business, 
first in the South and afterwards in New York. He married 
into the family of Boat-owner Gibbons, who was looked upon 
as one of the most important and influential business men in 
Morris county. The Judge's interest in New Jersey State affairs 
began when the New York Chamber of Commerce deputed him 
to see that the New Jersey State authorities did nothing, or 
allowed nothing, that would affect the value of the harbor of 
New York. It was at a time when the riparian discussion was 
young, and when numerous movements were projected on the 
Jersey shore that might reach the channel of the river and even- 
tually destroy New York bay as a refuge for the floating commerce 
of the world. Even as early as that, the New York merchants 
and men of commerce feared that the " filling in " on the Jersey 
shore, if carried on too extensively, would be swept by the tide 
out toward the sea, and, eventually choking up the Narrows, 




Henry C. Kelsey. 



32 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

make the great bay of New York a sort of inland lake. It 
was to see that these threatened water invasions from the Jersey 
coast were not carried to a dangerous point that Judge Lathrop 
went into public life in New Jersey. His participation in the 
discussions over the various aspects of the riparian question, and 
his influence in bringing about the final adjustment, brought 
him into a bright public light, and made him one of the pic- 
turesque figures in State politics. The managers of Democratic 
affairs saw that he was a man of exceptionable power — skillful, 
able, shrewd and resourceful — and he was gladly welcomed into 
the party councils as their coadjutor. 

Mr. Kelsey's official position — to be Secretary of State is to 
be next to the Governor in political prominence — gave him an 
opportunity to lift his light from under the bushel basket and 
dazzle the State with it. Through the patronage of his office he 
easily made himself recognized as a political factor in the 
extreme northern counties. He had been a country editor in 
Sussex when Governor Randolph first discovered him. During 
his campaign to the Governorship, Randolph had dropped in on 
the town of Newton, and at the office of the " Newton Herald " 
he made Mr. Kelsey's acquaintance. He found him unusually 
fertile in suggestion, a brave, cold calculator, and when he had 
reached the Governorship he made up his mind that the Sussex 
editor would make an admirable Secretary of State, and con- 
ferred the dignity upon him. It was not long before Mr. Kelsey 
had forced recognition as one of the most skillful members of 
the Democratic State household. He was a small, thin and 
wiry fellow, and he cultivated an affectation of deafness that 
shielded him from noticing the unpleasant things his enemies 
and rivals had to say about him, but left him keenly alive to all 
the things that were gratifying to his pride. 

Governor Randolph's position at the head of the State was 
the reward of years in the public service. He was one of the 
largest coal operators in New York, and so rich that he came to 
be known as " Mr. Moneybags of Morristown." He had first 
lived in Hudson county, been active in public affairs there, and 
represented the county in the State Senate. Later he purchased a 



MODERN BA-TTLES OF TRENTON. 33 

handsome property at Morristown, and became a resident of that 
county. He had set his eye upon the United States Senate, and, 
as far as he was able, had given a drift to State affairs calculated 
to turn the current of politics toward the channel of his ambi- 
tion. He was bending eagerly forward to the goal for which he 
was reaching, and had now reached the Gubernatorial milestone 
on the road to Washington. 

The man who made the schemes of these three ready and far- 
seeing planners effective by his energy was Henry S. Little, then 
an ex- Senator, and, by Randolph's appointment, Clerk of the 
Court of Chancery. That clerkship was not only one of the 
most lucrative places in the Capitol building, but it was also the 
one that gave largest opportunities for acquaintance with the 
class of men who make and mould public sentiment. The fifteen 
hundred lawyers in the State, with their army of clients and 
litigants, were brought into almost daily contact with his office. 
Mr. Little had enough of the Irish instinct of push, aggressive- 
ness and ambition to make the most of the opportunity that lay 
at his hand. His father had come from Ireland in 1810, and 
settled in Monmouth county. And there he had gone into busi- 
ness, and finally started the first line of steam-packets that ever 
plied between any point in Monmouth county and New York. 
These steam-launches of his used to run down the creek that 
struggles out through the meadows from Matawan to the bay, 
and opened a market for the produce of the farms in all the 
region around about. As his wealth grew, he organized the 
Farmers' National Bank of Middletown Point, which is yet in 
existence ; and the private tutor whom he brought to his home 
to educate his children became the nucleus, so to speak, of a 
local classical school. 

When Henry Stafford Little came of age he divided his time 
between his country law practice and the further development of 
the resources of the county for which his father had already done 
80 much. He promoted and in large part built the turnpike 
which opened new highways for settlers ; and subsequently, by 
the incorporation of the New York and Long Branch Railroad 
Company, established the route that has since made the seacoast 

3 



34 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

section of Monmouth the gayest of midsummer capitals and 
dotted that section of it with whole lines of pretty and thriving 
villages. So that his family for two generations had thus been 
identified with the prosperity and progress of the county. When, 
in recognition of his public spirit, his neighbors sent him to the 
State Senate as the county's spokesman, he reached the head of 
the most important committees, and finally the Presidency of 
that body ; and his selection by Governor Randolph as the Clerk 
of the Court of Chancery was but a promotion earned as the 
reward of his public services. 

In build and appearance he was the very antipode of Mr. 
Kelsey. Too active to be stout, he was tall, wiry and nervous, 
and a man upon whose face one could read the signs of intense 
activity. 

As the time for the election of a new Governor approached in 
1871, these four magnates of the State House got together, with 
their lieutenants, at the Chamber of Commerce in New York, 
and agreed that they would advance Joseph D. Bedle, the rotund 
and cherub-faced Supreme Court Justice, whose circuit was in 
Hudson county, to the chief Chair of State; and they im- 
mediately set the machine in motion to secure his nomination by 
the State convention. Bedle's name had scarcely been proposed 
before it became apparent that he would have to measure lances 
with an antagonistic power in his own county. From his posi- 
tion on the bench Judge Bedle had thrown obstructions in the 
way of some public schemes that had been set on foot by Con- 
gressman Orestes Cleveland, who was then the most considerable 
political factor in Hudson ; and Mr. Cleveland set out to cripple 
his canvass by weaning his home delegation from him. Of 
course, by the rule of politics, the failure of his own county to 
support him in the convention would have been an insurmount- 
able bar to his nomination. If Bedle were allowed to stand 
alone before the people of Hudson as a candidate for Governor, 
local pride and affiliation would have given him their support 
for the asking, and in order to furnish the local politicians with 
another Hudson name to rally around, the shrewd Congressman 
suggested that Leon Abbett, Bedle's next-door neighbor in old 




Henry S. Little. 



36 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Sussex Place in Jersey City and tLen rising into prominence as a 
champion of the workingman and wage- earner, be Hudson's candi- 
date for the Governorship. In spite of this attempt to divide his 
neighbors against him, Governor Bedle's strength grew apace, and 
Mr. Cleveland saw that he would secure the nomication unless a 
better-known name were brought into the canvass. 

One Democratic name was known in every household in 
the State. Joel Parker had been its Governor in war times. 
His contact with the men whom the State sent forward to 
Washington to fill its battlefield quota, and his sympathetic 
reception of their bereaved wives and children when they went 
to him with their tales of misery, gave him opportunities for 
personal acquaintances among the masses that he had im- 
proved. A great big, good-natured, rollicking fellow, tall of 
stature and broad of girth, with the air and manner and dress 
of a farmer, always accessible, with a generous word for every- 
body and a kindly sympathy for all who needed it, he^ had 
come to be looked upon as the personal friend of half the men, 
women and children in the Commonwealth, and they in turn 
esteemed it a rare flattery to be accounted his friend. The party 
never was in straits but that this old man of the people was 
summoned to the front. And now, to defeat his local enemy, 
Mr. Cleveland brought his name forward as one good to 
conjure with. Almost immediately the War Governor's Mon- 
mouth home became the Mecca of the party workers of high 
and low degree. Big men and little men, leaders and followers, 
all sought him to urge him into the canvass. They found him 
willing, but unable. He had a family to provide for, and noth- 
ing but his practice as a lawyer to depend upon, and he felt that 
he could not afford to leave his field of labor for the pittance of 
$3,000 a year, with which the labors of the Governor were 
rewarded. They pledged themselves to advance the Governor's 
salary to $5,000 a year, if he would but consent to lead the 
fray, and, after much urging, he consented if the nomination 
were offered to him with substantial unanimity, to accept it. 

The State House managers were alone unwilling to accept him. 
Senator Abbett's bid for the Hudson delegation had been a reason- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 37 

ably successful one, but when the day for the holding of the State 
convention arrived, it was understood that these forty-nine votes 
were to be cast at the proper time for the old war horse from 
Monmouth. Similar arrangements were made with delegations 
from five of the lower counties of the State. They were all 
committed to the support of local candidates, with the under- 
standing that when Congressman Orestes Cleveland made the 
speech on the floor of the convention formally putting Parker 
in nomination they were all to abandon their local favorites, and 
join in the hue and cry for Parker. J. Daggett Hunt, a tall, 
fine- looking delegate from Summit, with a good voice and fine 
delivery, who was over-ambitious to make the first presentation 
of Governor Parker's name, almost spoiled the programme by 
making a pretentious speech in Parker's favor before the oppor- 
tune moment for Mr. Cleveland's rallying speech arrived. 

Much excitement attended the informal roll-call, but it 
seemed as if Bedle had a majority of the delegates, and Colonel 
Wm. C. Alexander, who served as the Chairman of the conven- 
tion, was about to announce the Judge's nomination when the 
Hudson Congressman sprang to the floor. 

" The Chairman ia about to announce the result of the ballot," 
Colonel Alexander admonished. " For what purpose does the 
delegate from Hudson desire the floor ? " 

When Mr. Cleveland said in response that he was going to 
make a last effort for harmony, the State House delegates sup- 
posed that he was about to turn the Hudson county delegation 
over to their favorite; and it was only after he had made his pre- 
arranged speech for Parker and enthused the convention for the 
man from Monmouth, that they saw the error they had made in 
allowing him to take the floor. The anti-Bedle delegates broke 
into prearranged applause when he announced the change of 
the forty-nine Hudson votes from Abbett to Parker, and the 
five lower county delegations broke from their first-announced 
candidates to the Freehold veteran. A stampede followed, and, 
on "Cale" Valentine's motion, Parker's nomination was made 
by acclamation. The other candidates presented to the conven- 
tion before the end was reached were Nehemiah Perry, of New- 



38 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

ark ; General Theodore Runyon, who had already canvassed the 
State for the same office in 1865, and been beaten by Marcus 
L. Ward ; Benjamin F. Lee, a rising figure in South Jersey 
politics; General Charles B. Haight, a rollicking orator, practic- 
ing at the bar at Monmouth ; Isaac B. Dickinson and Thomas 
D. Armstrong. 

After Joel Parker's nomination was made unanimous the 
Republicans assailed his war record. They declared that he 
had been purposely dilatory in sending men forward in the hour 
of the nation's peril, and that a sympathy with the Rebels had 
made him disloyally tenacious of the State's rights as opposed 
to the nation's authority. Mr. Benjamin F. Lee, who accom- 
panied him on his campaign, tells an admirable story of the 
skill with which Governor Parker met these unfair partisan 
critics of his. 

" Gentlemen of the jury," Mr. Lee heard him begin at one 
of the campaign gatherings — the crowd imagined that he had 
forgotten that he was not at that moment a lawyer preparing to 
plead for a client, but a citizen seeking the suffrages of his fel- 
low-citizens, and a loud laugh greeted his slip of tongue. 

" Well," the old Governor went on after the merriment had 
subsided, " I should have eaid ' Fellow citizens ! ' But no I 
let it be 'Gentlemen of the jury,' for after all you are a jury 
gathered to try your candidate on a charge of sympathy with 
treason, and to declare him guilty or not guilty by your votes 
when you have heard all the evidence. So let it be ' Gentlemen 
of the jury,' and we'll organize a court here for the trial of 
Governor Joel Parker on the charges that have been made 
against him." 

Then assuming to be the public prosecutor, he formally opened 
the case for the State, and arraigned himself in such a speech as 
a prosecutor might have made had he been really at the bar. 
Then he called the witnesses one after the other, pictured them 
as sitting in the witness box, and questioned them on the direct 
and on the "croes" just as they might have been questioned by 
counsel on either side, and repeated their imaginary responses to 
his amused and interested audience. 




Joel Parker. 



40 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

"And now the State rests," he went on, "and the witnesses for 
the defense are summoned. Andrew G. Curtin, take the stand. 
You are the War Governor of Pennsylvania, Mr. Curtin ? " 

"I am." 

" Do you know the reputation of Joel Parker, of New Jersey, 
for loyalty to the Union cause ? " 

" I do." 

" Is it good or bad ? " 

For answer he read a letter from Curtin in which that noted 
patriot had spoken words of highest encomium for the zeal with 
which Joel Parker had upborne the Union arms. 

" Edwin M. Stanton, take the stand." And the Governor, 
acting as counsel for the defense, put the great Secretary through 
the same series of interrogations. And, for answer, Stanton's 
telegram, thanking the Governor for the alacrity with which he 
had sent troops forward, was read amid wildest applause. 

" I might have produced a witness whose certificate would be 
the absolute acquittal of the defendant at the bar." he said, with 
subdued pathos, and turning as if to address a court, " but the 
hand of the assassin has sent him to a grave kept green by the 
tears of his people. I am forced, your Honor, to go to the jury 
without the testimony of Abraham Lincoln." 

As though he were the judge at the trial, he now turned his 
face to the audience and solemnly charged the j ury, and at the 
end of it he exclaimed that " It is for you, gentlemen of the jury, 
to say whether, on the evidence presented before you to-night, 
this defendant, Joel Parker, is guilty or not guilty." 

Every man and boy in the vast throng was on his feet in an 
instant and shouting a verdict of acquittal, and it is safe to say 
that when election day came not a man who witnessed that 
imaginary trial failed to cast his vote for Joel Parker. 

When Governor Parker was ready to step into the Governor- 
ship, to which he was elected over Walsh by a majority just 
short of six thousand, it looked as though the promise of in- 
creased salary, with which he had been tempted into the battle, 
was not to be redeemed. Only the Legislature could pass the 
act making the increase ; and that, in both branches, was con- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 41 

trolled by the Republicans. It was almost rash to hope that a 
Republican Legislature could be persuaded to redeem a campaign 
promise made by its opponents to their candidate. Even if they 
were disposed to do it, the act, to be constitutionally efifective, 
must be passed and approved, and on the statute-books before 
the commencement of his term. The Legislature assembled a 
week before the day fixed for his inauguration, and, as it was 
usual for the Houses to sit during the first week only for organi- 
zation, there was the other obstruction of time to stand in the 
way of the keeping of the engagement. 

Everybody knew of the understanding upon which Parker 
had gone into the campaign, and by the time the Houses got 
together the people had rather settled down to the conviction 
that the promise that he should have $5,000 a year during his 
term of service was something like a contract between the State, 
whose people had made him its Chief Magistrate, and himself. 
The members of the two Houses were not dead to the prevail- 
ing sentiment, and the moment they got together Assemblyman 
George H. Farrier, a well-known Hudson Republican, offered a 
bill fixing the Governor's salary at the stipulated advance, and, 
under suspension of rules, it was put through both Houses, and 
immediately signed by Governor Randolph, and so became a law 
within an hour after its introduction.* 



*The discussion concerning the increase of salary was marked, incidentally, 
by an agitation over the question of providing the Governor with an official 
residence at the capital. When the salary was not even as much as the $3,000 
that Governor Parker did not think he would be able to serve for, the State 
had tried to piece it out by providing its Chief Magistrate with an establish- 
ment in which he and his family might live rent free, and had erected on State 
street, a block or two east of the Capitol, a building that for several years was 
occupied as the Executive mansion. As the affairs of the State did not con- 
sume all of their time, and they preferred to live in their own homes — a 
good many of them had better than the one provided by the State— the Gov- 
ernors fell into the habit of renting the building, and appropriating the pro- 
ceeds to their own emolument, and the State ultimately sold it. The State 
Street House of the present day is the old-time establishment, with such en- 
largements and improvements as were needed to make a hotel of it. The 
main building, that part of it that abuts on the street, is the old Governor's 
residence, but some changes have been made in it. What is now the hotel 



42 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

A week later Governor Parker entered upon his second term 
of service to the State with everything arranged even by his 
party adversaries, even as his party friends had planned it for 
him. 



office, served as the reception and sitting-room. The broad English fireplace, 
that used to make it a pleasant rendezvous for public men in the winter season, 
still remains, except that the hotel proprietors have used it as a niche for a 
drum stove. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Which is a Short One to Tell of J. Daggett Hunt's 
Disappointment. 




p HE prominence into which his advocacy of the new 
railroad law had brought him, and the importance of 
the part which he plajed in the convention that gave 
Joel Parker the nomination for Governor, encouraged 
J. Daggett Hunt in the belief that the Governor might ap- 
point him to the clerkship of the Supreme Court. The 
position was then, as now, one of the most lucrative in the 
State House. South Jersey, however, urged the claims of Ben- 
jamin F. Lee upon the Governor, and for weeks it was un- 
certain who of them would finally capture the Governor's favor. 
Mr. Lee was quite as strongly equipped with claims for recogni- 
tion as was Mr. Hunt. He was not a brilliant platform orator 
like Hunt, but no man in the State could match him as a spin- 
ner of delightful yarns. Even up to the time of this writing 
he maintains his early reputation as one of the most picturesque 
raconteurs in the State. Quite as much, however, as by his per- 
sonal qualities, was he commended by his political services to the 
consideration of the Executive. For years he had been an im- 
portant factor in the politics of his section, and two or three 
times had so materially cut down the natural Republican 
majority of that section that he was regarded as its leading 
Democrat. 

The son of Hon. Thomas Lee, who had himself been a 
prominent public man, he had tactfully improved his oppor- 
tunities to form the acquaintance of influential citizens, while 
his own bon homme won him the friendship of the new men 
with whom he came in contact. For years his home was under 
the shadow of a glass factory in Cumberland, and the friendship 
which the hands employed in it felt for him made him popular 

(43) 



44 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

with the laboring element all through the county. He was 
sent to the Democratic State Committee to represent the inter- 
ests of the district, and in 1856 was made a Presidential 
Elector. Subsequently, when he was nominated for the Legis- 
lature in the overwhelmingly Republican district in which he 
lived, he came within three votes of carrying it. In 1870 he 
was given the nomination for Congress. The First district was 
then, as now, Republican, ordinarily, by 3,700 majority. It had 
become a retreat for runaway blacks from the South, and these, 
never pursued, or never overtaken, had settled within its limits. 
The Emancipation Proclamation which freed them and the negro 
suffrage amendment which enfranchised them, served to increase 
the normal Republican majority to close on to 5,000. Mr. 
Lee accepted the nomination for Congress in the face of certain 
defeat for the aid which he might render his party in other sec- 
tions of the State; and his gallant contest reduced the majority 
to 1,500. These particularly flattering records at the polls 
pointed him out as an exceptionally strong man in that section 
of the State, and when the Gubernatorial convention of 1871 
assembled, every delegate from the First district went to Tren- 
ton to urge his selection as the candidate. He let them know 
that his preference was for Joel Parker, but they were bent 
upon casting their 118 votes for him on the informal ballot 
till he insisted upon their yielding to the general demand for 
Parker's nomination, and he wheeled them into line for the 
Freehold veteran just in time to turn the tide of battle. South 
Jersey, therefore, felt herself entitled to some recognition at the 
hands of the new Governor, and who better than Benjamin F. 
Lee to receive it in its behalf? 

Mr. Lee had been in sharp antagonism in Cumberland 
county with old John L. Sharp, known at that time to every 
public man in the State. They had been rival candidates for 
Congress, and their rivalry had resulted in the defeat of both in 
the Democratic District Convention. Mr. Lee thought that he 
had the more right to be embittered because of his belief that 
Mr. Sharp's presence in the convention was rather for the pur- 
pose of defeating him than in hope of winning the nomination 




Benjamin F. Lee. 



46 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

himself. And so naturally enough it was expected that Mr. 
Lee would seek opportunities for reprisals. But when, in the 
following fall, the party went hunting around Cumberland 
county for a candidate for State Senator, Mr. Sharp was proba- 
bly more surprised than gratified to learn that Mr. Lee was one 
of his warmest advocates. 

" Not that I like a hair of your head," he said to Sharp, 
" but because I recognize that in the existing condition of affairs 
you are the only man that can probably win this fight." 

Sharp retorted that he would look for an opportunity to get 
square with Mr. Lee, and when he heard that Governor Parker 
was considering Mr. Lee's name in connection with the Supreme 
Court clerkship, he hastened to Trenton to say that Mr. Lee 
was the man who, of all others, ought to be appointed.. 

After a little delay Mr. Lee's name was sent into the Senate 
for confirmation. Daggett Hunt had just taken his seat at the 
table in one of the hotels, when the colored waiter who was 
bringing him his dinner told him of his defeat. Hunt could 
scarcely believe his ears. 

" What's that you said?" he asked of the dusky plate- bearer. 

" I jest heah," was the response, "dat de Gub'ner done gone 
made Mr. Lee Clerk ob de S'preme Co't." 

Hunt almost upset his plate of soup in the energy with which 
he shot from the table. Seizing his hat, he dashed up to the 
State House to find out whether the story was true. The 
Governor was not there, but Eddie Fox, his Chief Clerk, who 
sat at the desk in the ante-room, assured him that the colored 
man's information was perfectly reliable. Daggett almost burst 
into tears. 

" It is bad enough," he sobbed, " to be disappointed in my 
expectations, but great heavens ! imagine my humiliation when 
the news was brought to me by a confounded darky." 

At that time the colored brother was not in as high favor 
among Jersey men as he is to-day. The State had been kept in 
perpetual agitation for two or three years over the constitutional 
amendment which enfranchised him. The Legislature had re- 
jected it, and Governor Randolph had won the odium of Demo- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 47 

orats by advising in one of his annual messages, written after 
the amendment had become part of the United States Constitu- 
tion, that the State accept it in good faith. Even in the cam- 
paign that had resulted in Parker's election to the Governorship, 
it had been an exciting issue, and at the time of Mr. Lee's 
appointment the people were not yet reconciled to the idea of 
taking the colored man to their bosom. 

Of course Mr. Lee was confirmed by the Senate, and he was 
subsequently re-appointed by Governor Bedle in 1877, and 
Ludlow in 1882, Green in 1887, and Abbett in 1892. 



CHAPTER V. 

Which Tells of the Complications Out of Which the General- 

Railroad Law Came, and How the Decision of Vice 

Chancellor Dodd, on the Stanhope Fraud Case, 

Helped to Bring About the Result. 



fi^^JI^ LL political matters having been disposed of, the Leg- 
' ^^ islature of 1872 went to Trenton with nothing but 
^<^^ the big railroad fight to engage its energies. The 
Senate contained some notable men. It was Repub- 
lican ; in fact, both Houses were Republican. Edward Bettle 
was its President; John W. Taylor, a keen-eyed Newark law- 
yer, with a face suggestive of Indian lineage, represented Essex ; 
John R. McPherson, who afterwards became one of the most 
notable figures in State politics, stood sponsor for Hudson ; Levi 
D. Jarrard, tall and slim, florid, with blue eyes and straight, 
sharp nose — for all the world like Andrew Jackson in appear- 
ance and manner — who, during his several terms in the Senate, 
legislated himself into a powerful middle-State boss, and event- 
ually into the State Prison, was " the gentlemen from Middle- 
sex ;" Augustus W. Cutler, a farmer-lawyer from Morristown, 
who had in a large degree the same elements of popularity that 
had made Joel Parker strong, was the Morris county represen- 
tative ; Hunterdon's seat was filled by a man bearing the name 
of Banghart, which another engaged in the new railroad lobby 
brought into unpleasant notoriety ; and Salem was made notable 
by the presence of John C. Belden as her spokesman on the 
floor. 

The business of the session had scarcely begun before the 
railroad giants began to go at each other. General Carse, a 
military orator of the Assembly, was the first to make a move 
in the battle of the session. Carse had been a conspicuous and 
picturesque figure in the carpet-bag era of politics in Florida, 
(48) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 49 

Some of the readers of this volume may remember that he was 
concerned in the somewhat violent establishment of a carpet-bag 
Legislature of that State during the reconstruction period. He 
was a fellow of superb audacity, and perfectly fearless — just 
the man to take the sort of risks which the leaders of the oppo- 
sition to the general railroad law were required to face. His 
shot in this battle was in the form of a resolution calling for a 
committee to make an inquiry into the terms of the lease of the 
Joint Companies to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. This 
was followed in the Senate by an act attacking the lease. The 
spirit that it was hoped to arouse by these hostile movements 
was revealed by Mr. Cutler's motion in the Senate, that a 
majority of the directors in the leasing concern be residents of 
New Jersey. That the property of the Joint Companies had 
gone into the possession of a syndicate of foreign capitalists was 
a circumstance employed by the opponents of the monopoly as 
a pretext for an attack upon it. Senator McPherson met Mr. 
Cutler's motion with the suggestion that the owners of a stock 
company should not be disturbed in the control of their prop- 
erty, and that such a requirement as Senator Cutler had insisted 
upon would discourage foreign capital from assisting further in 
the development of the State's resources. 

The Senate bill does not seem to have got beyond the stage 
of second reading, and General Carse's investigation was " called 
off." There are some people who suspect that it was introduced 
for that very purpose. The anti-monopoly sentiment of the 
State had, however, secured a firm footing in the Assembly, 
and the announcement toward the close of March that the Phila- 
delphia and New York Railroad had boomed its bill through 
the House, was received with wild acclaim everywhere. The 
promoters of the bill were shrewd enough to forestall the oppo- 
sition to its passage that the corporation whose directory was 
entirely unknown to Jerseymen might make to it, by naming 
in their bill as the incorporators of their road, a list replete 
with names familiar to all Jerseymen, and the act was en- 
thusiastically rushed through the House with the cry that it 
provided for Jerseymen a road run by Jerseymen. 

4 



4- 



60 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

It will not escape notice that the Assembly act proclaimed in 
its title that it was for a through competing line between Phila- 
delphia and New York. A more secret attempt to accomplish 
its object was made by the introduction into the Senate of a 
bill conferring a franchise on a road to extend ostensibly from 
Flemington to Lambertville, but which, by the linking of 
other authorized lines with it, was to complete the opposition 
route between the two cities. Senator McPherson easily guessed 
the surreptitious scheme of the Senate bill, and opposed it on the 
ground that a road already covered that route, to which Senator 
Banghart replied that it did not accommodate the New Jersey 
public. Senator Cutler, and Senators Hewitt, of Mercer, and 
Williams, of Passaic, urged the passage of the act. Senators 
Taylor and Bettle aided Mr. McPherson in arguing against it, 
and it was lost by a vote of six to nine. That vote was the 
forerunner of the defeat of the House bill when it reached the 
Senate, and toward the close of March the Senate refused to 
pass the act. 

The capital was filled with excitement when the result be- 
came known. An impromptu demonstration at the Trenton 
House lauded the Senators who had voted for the bill; and 
Barton, who had introduced it into the Assembly, was given a 
serenade. There was some humor mixed with the indignation 
with which the failure of the enterprise for the year was received. 
When Secretary Sinnickson Chew stepped in front of the 
Speaker's desk to announce the unwelcome result to the Assem- 
bly, Assemblyman Fisher, of Middlesex, fired a bright quip at 
the stubborn Senate : 

<' Whereas, The Secretary of the Senate has reported to this House that 
the Senate has refused to pass the Philadelphia and New York Eailroad 
bill ; therefore, be it 
" Resolved, That the Clerk of this House be requested to inquire of the Sec- 
retary of the Senate why the Senate refused to pass the same." 

The sentiment against the continued domination of the 
monopoly that had fallen into foreign hands, grew apace, how- 
ever, and by the time the Legislature of 1873 assembled it had 
acquired enormous force. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



51 




As in 1872, both Houses were again Republican. The selec- 
tion of John W. Taylor to its Presidency was an evidence that 
the Senate was still 
within the grasp of 
the old monopoly ; the 
choice of Isaac L. 
Fisher, of Middlesex, 
to the Speakership, was 
the sign of the prev- 
alence of an opposi- 
tion sentiment there, 
and it was evident at 
the very opening of 
the session that the two 
Houses were destined 
to lock horns in one 
of the greatest railroad 
struggles in all the 
State's history. 

Among others who went to Trenton to represent one of the 
constituencies in the State, was a quiet and unassuming little 
farmer from Morris. " The boys " all called him " Gus ; " in 
official verbiage he was known as Assemblyman Canfield. He 
had scarcely taken his seat in the House before he sent to the 
Clerk's desk a little act which the newspaper correspondents, 
when they saw it, dismisfed with a line, but which in the end 
became the absorbing topic of the session. It authorized any 
thirteen persons to form a railroad company under certain arti- 
cles of association to be filed in the Secretary of State's office, 
when capital stock to the value of $1,000 for every mile of rail- 
road projected by them had been subscribed. Its importance 
was overshadowed by the presence on the files of another act 
aimed more directly at the mark. This second act was for the 
incorporation of the New York and Philadelphia Railroad 
Company ; and it authorized a number of well-known opera- 
tors — among them, George Richards, Cortlandt Parker, John 
K. Cecil, Samuel C. Forker, A. C. Cadwallader, A. P. Ber- 



Isaac L. Fisher. 



K: 



52 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

thoud, G. N. Abeel, William Walter Phelps, Abram S. Hewitt, 
Charles K. Landis, Abraham Browning and Amos Clark — to 
construct " a safe and substantial line of communication across 
the State." The capital was fixed at $7,000,000, and the route 
was to be over the line from Bound Brook to Trenton. 

Canfield's act was sent to the committee and held there with 
an indiflFerence born of the idea that it had no necessary relation 
to the great fight on hand. Men forgot all about it, while an 
enormous and picturesque lobby struggled over the less sweep- 
ing bills that went straight to the core of the issue. 

That lobby, and its methods and extravagances ! There were 
I ^Id George Dorrance, veteran legislation manipulator, and cool, 
keen, black-eyed Culver Barcalow, handsome in spite of his 
drooping eyelid, to conduct the difficult defensive battle on the 
part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Culver Barcalow, the 
keener and busier of the two, was the very antipode of Johnson 
Banghart, the active head of the attacking forces — ostensibly the 
counsel of the Air Line, really its lobbyist — dashing of manner, 
loquacious, loud-voiced, tall, straight, of full habit, and strut- 
ting, gaudy and showy in dress, with streaming neckwear of 
brilliant hues, and diamonds gleaming from breast and fingers f 
Barcalow, on the other hand, smooth, quiet, polite, insinuating, 
always attired in suit of sleekest black of perfect cut and hang, 
with a single unobtrusive glint in his spotless shirt front. 

The lugubrious Henry M. Hamilton, of polished manners and 
scholastic finish, whose tall form in long coat buttoned close to 
the neck, gave him the air of a country parson, was the gorgeous 
Banghart's associate and chief. He had made himself the central 
figure in a syndicate that had purchased acres and acres of prop- 
erty on the line of the new road, and was looking forward with 
hungry anticipation to the time when the building of the line 
would bring these speculative possessions of his into the market 
and turn them into gold. And with them — short, slim, ner- 
vous, light-haired and pale-faced — was Delos E. Culver, a 
plunging New York speculator and contractor, who was quoted 
as having millions within his reach, and whose brother, Isaac 
B., stood for him in the new directory. E. C. Knight, wha 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 53 

had been a director in the Pennsylvania Railroad, associated 
himself with them ; and Samuel K. Wilson, of Trenton, made 
himself conspicuous by the zeal with which he espoused the 
interests of the new line. Another active and influential parti- 
san of the scheme was Lewis R. Taylor, of the Taylor Iron 
Works of High Bridge, a man of considerable fortune and wide 
family relations, whose cool sagacity and indomitable resolu- 
tion were of great service in the struggle. 

Assisting the chiefs on either side in their strategic warfare, 
swarms of satellites, buttonholing members, carrying messages, 
"seeing men," fluttered hither and thither; corks popped at the 
bars, sumptuous dinners at the big hotels, wine banquets lasting 
till the early hours of dawn, terrapin and steamed oysters on 
demand in every basement — it was an endless revelry for the 
men with votes worth having and palates worth tickling. 

To further counteract the efforts of the Philadelphia and New 
York Railroad people, so much of the press as was controlled 
by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the company's hired orators 
everywhere began to clamor for the passage of a general rail- 
road law. 

" If a competing line between New York and Philadelphia is 
to be built," was the run of their argument, " why not make it 
possible for any syndicate to construct it ? Why confer so val- 
uable a franchise upon a particular lot of men ? Throw the 
gates open to anybody who desires to build one. And besides, 
our railroad laws are too exclusive anyhow, and too limited in 
their operations. Why not throw the whole State open to capi- 
talists who desire to spend their money in the development of 
her resources? Instead of conferring a little franchise here and 
a little franchise there, let us make it possible for anybody to 
build a railroad wherever a railroad is wanted. If railroads are 
beneficial to the State, the more of them the better, and the 
freer the franchise the larger the number of them that will be 
built." 

These arguments, especially intended to act as buffers for the 
growing public sentiment for the chartering of the new road, 
struck a popular chord, and it was not many weeks before the 



54 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

State was quite thoroughly convinced that they pointed out a 
very admirable solution of the whole problem. They did not, 
however, have any immediately perceptible effect upon the 
treatment of the question by the two Chambers of the Legisla- 
ture. Each branch adhered to the particular bill that had been 
framed for it, conferring the same franchise upon two antago- 
nistic corporations, and devoted all its time to its passage. \^ 

The New York and Philadelphia Railroad bill was called up 
on a second reading in the House near the end of January. 
General Carse sprang to the front at once with a motion that it 
be laid over till the following Tuesday. Assemblyman Frank 
Ward — the Bald Eagle of Sussex — speaking for the motion, de- 
clared that the bill was being rushed through in a most shame- 
less manner, and urged that the members be allowed an oppor- 
tunity before voting on it to acquaint themselves with the char- 
acter of some amendments the committee had incorporated 
in it. One of the allurements held before the Legislature for 
its favor was a proposed gift of a half million dollars to the State 
for the franchise, and Canfield explained with some warmth 
that the only change made in the committee was one devoting 
the half million dollars to the State School Fund. Assemblyman 
Garret A. Hobart, of Passaic, went into more elaborate expla- 
nations of the character and effect of the amendments, and 
diverging into a little disquisition about the much-talked- of free 
railroad law, declared that it had been agitated for five years,, 
and that the House was as well posted then as it would be in the 
five years to come. George Patterson, of Monmouth, announced 
himself " prepared to vote for such a noble bill as this." In 
spite of all their efforts to advance the measure on the calendar. 
General Carse's motion was agreed to (29-24), and when Tues- 
day came, Mr. Macknet had it put back in the Committee on 
Corporations. The next day the committee gave it a hearing, 
with a vast throng of interested citizens in attendance. J. Dag- 
gett Hunt was there to make one of his characteristic speeches 
in favor of a general railroad law, but was crowded out to make 
way for Cortlandt Parker and B. W. Throckmorton, who spoke 
for the bill itself. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



55 



While legislation was in this shape, Vice Chancellor Amzi 
Dodd accidently threw fresh fuel into the anti- monopoly flame. 

The Legislature of 1872 had passed an act naming George 
Richards, Isaac B. Jolly, Edward Canfield, William Allison, 
William Jackson and others as the Stanhope Railroad Com- 
pany. Stanhope is a small mining settlement in the Morris 
mountains; and, on the faith of its promoters' assurances that it 
merely conferred a 
franchise on a little ore 
road up in Morris, the 
act floated along with 
other legislative drift- 
wood of the session to 
the statute books as 
something harmless. 
When, however. Secre- 
tary of State Kelsey's 
office began to be be- 
sieged by those who 
had been known for 
their conspicuousness 
in the National Rail- 
way controversy, for 
scores of certified copies 
of the act, suspicion was 
aroused, and the Penn- 
sylvania officials began 
to smell a mouse. 

Upon an examination of the act, they discovered to their sur- 
prise that one section of it, the eighth, conferred upon a lot of 
little roads the right to consolidate themselves into a competing 
line between New York and Philadelphia. When Dorrance and 
Barcalow were summoned to the offices of the Pennsylvania 
Railroad Company for explanations, they declared by all that 
was good that that eighth section had not been in the bill at 
any stage of its progress through the Houses, and that it must 




Amzi Dodd. 



56 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

have been smuggled into it dishonestly. Its purpose became 
the more manifest when Hamilton, Culver, Banghart, and 
the rest assigned the franchises it conferred upon them to a line 
of leagued roads under the style and title of the National Rail- 
way Company, and work on the construction of a New York 
and Philadelphia line in competition with the Pennsylvania 
Railroad was begun. 

The attention of Governor Parker had been called to the act 
by this time, and on the last day of April he indited a letter to 
Edward Bettle, the President of the Senate, and Speaker Niles, 
of the Assembly, advising that as each had certified the bill to 
him as having been passed by the Houses over which they 
respectively presided, they owed it to themselves and to the public 
to institute an investigation, " and if it be found that an inter- 
polation was fraudulently made, to inquire how and by whom 
it was accomplished and to publish the facts." 

Three days later both Mr. Bettle and Mr. Niles joined in a 
letter responding to the Governor's inquiry. They declared 
that " the manuscript copy of the bill as introduced into the 
House and now on file, has been by us carefully examined, and 
we find that the bill certified as having passed in our respective 
Houses contains provisions not in the original bill. The eighth 
section of the bill, as filed in the office of the Secretary of State, 
differs materially from the same section of the original bill. An 
addition has been made to the section greater in length than the 
section itself as introduced, which addition purports to give the 
company much greater powers than did the original bill. This 
addition was surreptitiously and fraudulently interpolated, and 
the proof of such fraud and interpolation is the fact that the 
original bill in its eighth section contained no such provision, 
and that in no stage of its progress in either House was any 
amendment, alteration or addition made or offered. The bill in 
question, therefore, while apparently receiving the sanction of 
both Houses and the approval of your Excellency, never in 
reality passed either House." 

Through Isaac W. Scudder, a fat and jolly Jersey City law- 
yer, who was the company's chief legal adviser, the Pennsyl- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 57 

vania Railroad Company applied for an injunction restraining 
the men responsible for the fraud from reaping the benefit they 
had expected from it, and enjoining them from continuing the 
movement looking to the establishment of the projected new 
through route between New York and Philadelphia. Chancel- 
lor Zabriskie was in Europe at the time, and the application 
was made to Amzi Dodd, the Vice Chancellor, the peer of the 
Chancellor in legal skill and learning. The hearing extended 
over several months. 

The Pennsylvania Company produced proofs in support of 
its theory that the bill had been tampered with and the preg- 
nant and vital clause fraudulently interpolated while it was in 
transit from the Governor's office, after signature, to Secretary 
of State Kelsey's department for filing as a statute of the State ; 
and of the allegation in its pleadings that Hamilton, " on behalf 
of himself and some of his confederates," demanded of the 
National Railway Company, and received from it, the sum of 
$162,800 which "had been paid out by them to procure the 
passage" of the act in question. This money, the petition of 
the railroad company further alleged, was divided by Hamilton 
with some of the Commissioners named in the act incorporating 
the Stanhope Road, and with " certain members and officers of 
the New Jersey Legislature." 

Vice Chancellor Dodd's chambers, the morning he read his 
opinion, were crowded to suffiacation by interested railroad men. 
He took the advanced ground that a surreptitious bill establish- 
ing a spur between the two completed ends of the competing 
roads, could not confer a franchise to run cars over the State 
from Philadelphia to New York ; that unless the Legislature 
understood that the purpose of the bill was to establish a 
through route between the two cities, its grant of a franchise to 
a little local road could not be effiictive to that end ; in other 
words, that if the Philadelphia and New York Railroad wanted 
to establish a through route, any bill through which it sought 
that privilege must be thoroughly understood by the Legisla- 
ture and the Governor of the State as conferring it, and no 



58 MODERN BATTLES OF THENTON. 

secret attempt to steal the franchise under cover of clothing a 
little local road with life would be allowed to succeed. 

The excitement created by the decision was simply enormous. 
Coming right on the eve of the decisive battle between the two 
corporations in the halls of the Legislature, its importance may 
be imagined, but its eiFect can scarcely be described. The Vice 
Chancellor was praised and denounced by turns — commended 
for having stamped on a vicious abuse of the State's highest pre- 
rogative, and denounced by the cheated men who had expected 
to profit by the fraud. He was bombarded with anonymous 
letters. His enemies sent copies of unfavorable papers to his 
wife. He was portrayed in cartoons, and charged with having 
been influenced by financial considerations to favor the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company. 

His decision helped to give new force to the drift of public 
sentiment. The people had been impatient of the monopoly 
that sought to keep every competing line out of the State, and 
their sympathies had been given in large measure to those inter- 
ested in the new line movement. But the suspicions with which 
the revelations made during the course of this litigation had 
covered them, now made them also objects of distrust. The 
Commonwealth began to feel that it could not safely look for 
relief to a band of ipen who did not scruple to resort to crime to 
attain their ends. vThe only escape from these legislative ban- 
dits on the one side, and the legislative monopoly on the other, 
was a bill that should favor no road, but open the way for the 
use of the soil to all roads with wise restrictions ; and, so, aa 
enormous impulse was given to the demand for a free and general 
railroad enactment. 

It was while this wave of popular excitement and agitation 
was rolling over the State that the National Railway bill, 
or the Philadelphia and New York bill, as it was variously 
called, was to be given a hearing before the committee to 
which Mr. Macknet had had it recommitted. The Assembly 
Chamber was filled with an excited populace at the hour fixed 
for the discussion. The committee, for some reason, failed to 
put in an appearance, and the impatient throng began to clamor 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 59 

for speeches by some of the noted men who were seen in the 
crowd. Daggett Hunt, the most magnetic talker of them all, 
was lifted on the shoulders of a party of men, carried to the 
Speaker's chair and called upon for an address. His impas- 
sioned oratory evoked a wild applause that made the building 
tremble. It was for a general railroad law that he spoke. If 
railroads were necessary to build up the State, the franchise 
should be free as air. 

" I would take every railroad bill," he thundered, while the 
crowd broke into tumults of applause, " and put it in the waste 
basket till a vote is taken on the General Railroad bill." 

The next day the Philadelphia and New York bill was called 
up in the Assembly for a second reading again. Ward led the 
fight against it and was well seconded by Schultze and Morrow. 
The plea they interposed to block its passage was for the elimi- 
nation from the list of incorporators of the name of every man 
not a Jerseyman, and Ward called the $500,000 gift to the State 
School Fund a bribe. Canfield and Hobart made a gallant 
fight, however, for the advancement of the bill ; and, all the 
efforts of its enemies to amend it out of shape defeated, it was 
ordered to a third reading in the form in which it had come 
from the committee. Three days later it passed the House by 
an overwhelming majority. Assemblymen Anderson, Barnes, 
Carpenter, Carse, Cooley, Farrier, Foreman, Lee, Plympton, 
Reardon, Schultze, Ward and Whittaker, were the little hand- 
ful of thirteen who felt it safe to oppose it. 

Preparations were made, of course, to rush the bill over into 
the Senate and force the corporation adherents over there to deal 
with it. But by the time it reached the Secretary's desk they 
had anticipated its arrival by pushing forward the counter act 
known as the New Jersey Railroad act, and authorizing the 
running of trains over the same territory covered by the New 
York and Philadelphia bill, but under the auspices of the Penn- 
sylvania Railroad stockholders. 

< Late in the night of the same day on which the House bill 
•passed, the Senate called up this decoy measure for final passage. 
The Constitution exacted thirty days' preliminary notice in the 



60 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

newspapers of the inteation to apply for legislation of this 
special character. As the bill was an after- thought, devised in 
a sudden burst of inventive ardor only to offset the clamor for 
the competing line bill, that notice of the New Jersey Railroad 
act could not be produced. The men in the Pennsylvania's 
lobby were not of the kind to let a trifling constitutional bar 
like that stand in the railroad's way; and to give their bill a 
semblance of regularity they slyly appropriated the advertised 
notice of another bill and compelled it to do service for the 
emergency. Senator Sewell, himself a conspicuous Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad man, admitted with characteristic frankness, 
when the omission was called to the attention of the Senate, 
that the expedient had been resorted to ; but Senator McPher- 
son made a grand appeal to the chivalry of his colleagues when 
he argued that it was an imputation on the integrity of the 
committee that had reported the bill as having gone through all 
the necessary formalities, to intimate that it had not. The Sen- 
ate followed the lead of these two conspicuous advocates and 
condoned all the irregularities that had marked the birth of the 
measure, and while the crowd on the floor and in the galleries 
looked on with bated breath, put it through its stage of final 
passage just as the hands of the big clock over the Senate door 
marked the hour of midnight. 

Of course the fact that the Senate had disingenuously com- 
mitted itself to the enactment of the decoy bill did not prevent 
the friends of the Philadelphia and New York biJl from urging 
the passage of their act in that body. The familiar expedient 
of smothering the bill in the Committee on Railroads and Canals 
was employed, till Senator Hewitt rose in his place to demand 
that the committee report it to the Senate for action. It hap- 
pened that Senator Hopkins, Chairman of the committee, and 
Senator Jarrard, another of its members, were absent at the 
time, and there seemed to be some question as to whether the 
bill could be produced. It was suspected that Hopkins wa^ 
purposely absenting himself with the bill in his pocket. Th 
event proved that the suspicion, while not exactly unjust, wa 
not just exact. He had left it in the hands of Senate Secretar 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 61 

Babcock, but with iostructions to Babcock "not to let it get 
out." Sewell, Stone and McPherson went to the defense of the 
committee, and Hewitt's resolution was toned down so that it 
softly " requested," instead of savagely " instructed " the com- 
mittee to present it to the Chamber. And so, in spite of Hop- 
kins' directions to Babcock " not to let it get out," the bill did 
get out, and was put upon the calendar and progressed to a 
third reading. 

On the 4th of March it was called up on final passage. 
Hewitt, of Mercer, made a warm speech for it, and Cutler, of 
Morris, also advocated it vigorously. McPherson was against 
it, because he was in favor of conferring these franchises by a 
general railroad bill, and not by one that conferred special fran- 
chises on a party of operators who had been guilty of the Stan- 
hope frauds. 

" If they should demand the passage of this bill," he said, " I 
should say that it was beneath the dignity of a Senator to give 
them, as a matter of justice, what they have only failed to 
obtain by fraud and stealth." 

Senator Stone, of Union, who favored the bill, was yet forced 
to admit that some of the parties agitating for it should be in 
the State Prison, but he thought he made things even for them 
when, in the next breath, he declared that he could say the 
same thing of some who were opposing the bill. Mr. Williams 
could not understand this new-born zeal for a general railroad 
law. It had not shown itself till this bill came into the Senate, 
and when its fate was decided he had no doubt that they would 
hear no more of general railroad laws. The vote was taken 
while great throngs in the galleries and on the floor listened to 
the responses with eager interest. " Cul " Barcalow, in the 
shadow of one of the columns that towered alongside of the 
President's desk, and Dorrance, in the shadow of that on the 
other side, took mental note of the vote. As they had assured 
themselves before the roll-call was commenced, the act lacked 
one of the eleven " ayes " needed to pass it. Senators Banghart, 
Joe Cornish, Cutler, Havens, Hendrickson, Hewitt, Stone, 
Taylor, Williams and Wood responded in the affirmative. The 



62 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

eleven whose nays defeated it were Beesley, Edsall, Hopkins, 
Irick, Jarrard, Lydecker, McPherson, Moore, Newkirk, Sewell 
and Shepherd. 

The scene that ensued the announcement of the result beggars 
description. Barcalow and Dorrance deemed it prudent to dis- 
appear from view, while the air became vocal with denuncia- 
tions of those who had been instrumental in defeating the act. 
Hisses mingled with cheers from the crowd in the gallery, and 
some one shouted " Kill him ! Kill him ! " at one of the Senators 
whom an angry man in the crowd had bearded at his very desk. 
Popular frenzy was directed with special energy against the 
bulky Lydecker, who represented Bergen county in the Senate, 
and he had to ask the protection of a lobbyist, who saw him 
safely through side streets to his hotel. 

Edsall was also an uncertain quantity through it all. The 
National Railway people claimed that he was ready to act wiih 
them ; and at one time when, with his vote, the passage of the 
bill seemed imminent. President Bettle forestalled it by declar- 
ing an adjournment without even waiting for the formality of a 
motion. They say, however, that their apparent ability to pass 
the bill drove the Pennsylvania Railroad Company into dffers 
of compromise; that an agreement was reached between the 
managers of both, even before the bill was defeated, that both 
should aid in the passage of a general railroad law, and that the 
defeat of the bill by the Senate was but an empty formality that 
had been prearranged between them. 

Whatever the fact about this may be, it is certain that the ad- 
vocacy of the general railroad law by the Pennsylvania Railroad 
as an offset to the growing strength of its rival, logically com- 
mitted it to aid in the passage of such an act. The day follow- 
ing the defeat of the National's bill, that retiring little railroad 
act, which the modest Canfield had quietly committed to the 
House Committee on Corporations at the opening of the session, 
was dragged like a legislative Lazarus from its committee tomb 
into the arena, rushed upon the calendar and whooped through 
the Assembly with a hurrah. With the exception of Reardon 
and Foreman, every member of the House gave it his vote. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 63 

The galleries broke into cheers so prolonged that a recess was 
found necessary to let the pent-up enthusiasm of the spectators 
spend itself; and on re assembling after the tumult had subsided, 
Andrew Jackson Smith, a consequential Mercer member, 
aroused the echoes afresh by the offer of a resolution directing 
the AHjutant-General to furnish ordnance for the firing of a 
hundred guns on the " green " in front of the State House in 
honor of the victory. Even if it had not entered into the 
arrangement claimed by the National men to have been made, 
the Senate could not stand stiff against so overwhelming a dem- 
onstration, and five days later it, too, passed the bill by unani- 
mous vote. It was hastened to the Governor. He appended 
his signature to it after it had been compared, and by the 
12th of March it had become the law of the State. Forty 
minutes later the National Railway Company filed its notice 
under the act and took the franchise which for five years it had 
been so savagely struggling to secure. 

The State hailed the placing of her franchise at the disposal 
of all who were able to assist in the development of her 
resources as a new earnest of prosperity and went wild with joy. 
Trenton was filled with brass bands and the hotels were 
besieged by enthusiastic throngs. Canfield was called from his 
bed in his night-dress to make responses to one serenading party 
after another till daylit^ht came. There were music and cheers 
for all the men who had been conspicuous in their advocacy of the 
bill. Hamilton opened the wine cellars of the Trenton House 
to all comers; and the hundred guns for which Andrew Jack- 
son Smith'n resolution had called, belched the glad tidings 
across the D^^laware into the wilds of Bucks county. Jubilee 
meetings were h^'ld in almost every town and village. An 
especially noticeable one filled Taylor's Hall in Trenton three 
days later fr<>m pit to dome. Daggett Hunt, who had been the 
most eloquent advocate of the new policy, was the lion of the 
hour at this gathering Joseph C. Potts, ex Governor Rodman 
M. Price and B. W. Throckmorton followed him in felicitating 
^speeches. Frederick Kmgman, one of the most ardent of the 



64 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

local promoters of the triumphant measure, presided at the 
memorable gathering. 

What is now known as the New York and Bound Brook 
Railroad was the outcome of the efforts of the National Railway 
syndicate. The Pennsylvania Railroad fought its construction 
at every step. Preparations were under way at that time for 
the pretentious observance, in 1876, of the National Centennial 
by a great exhibition of the nation's industries at Philadelphia,, 
and the struggle between the two great corporations became one 
for the expected traffic which that exposition was sure to invite 
between New York and the Pennsylvania metropolis. The 
National Company hastened forward with its work to open its 
road in time for the great year of travel. Whenever it wa& 
possible for the older company to stick in an injunction or other 
court process for delay, it was done. The two roads came into 
violent collision at a point near Pennington, where the new 
road projected a crossing of the bed of the old road. Locomo- 
tives were run up to the point of intersection, and stationed 
there to block the insertion of the needed frog. The em- 
ployes of the two roads engaged in battles, with stones and 
crowbars and hammers for their weapons, and the public peace 
was so seriously menaced that it became necessary for the Gov- 
ernor to call out the militia for its preservation. The frog was 
inserted under the protection of the State's arms, and the pro- 
jectors of the new line went on with the extension of their 
tracks towards Philadelphia. 

At the Delaware river the new company met another obstacle. 
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company believed that it had suc- 
ceeded in having the General Railroad law so framed as to make 
it impossible for the new company to carry its road over the 
State's riparian land beneath the surface of that stream. There 
was a cross- war of injunctions and petitions and everything else 
in the legal line between them that ended in a decision favorable 
to the National Railroad Company, and its connection between 
New York and Philadelphia was finally completed. 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 65 

The triumph of the free- railroad idea, as determined in this 
contest, initiated a new era, not only in railroad legislation in 
New Jersey, but to a large extent, also, in political relations. 
The old Camden and Amboy idea was from that time abso- 
lutely eliminated. The Pennsylvania management was com- 
pelled to recognize the new conditions, and while it maintained 
an active lobby during legislative sessions, it was not able to 
exert, during ordinary political campaigns, that close supervision 
of counties and neighborhoods which had been formerly exer- 
cised by the Camden and Amboy regime, under which every 
candidate, Judge, Sheriff, Constable, or political leader in the 
State, was more or less actively retained in that interest. 

5 



CHAPTER VI. 

In Which the Steps by Which the State Acquired Title to Under- 
water Lands are Traced, and the Story of the Establish- 
ment OF Her Free School Fund is Told. 




OMPLICATED with these questions of monopoly rights 
and exclusive franchises and transit duties were others 
of equal importance and interest growing out of the 
ownership of the shore front. A dispute between the 
States of New York and New Jersey over the boundary line 
between the two States in the Hudson river, precipitated a dis- 
cussion that brought the whole question of the ownership of 
underwater rights to the attention of the public. Half a cen- 
tury or more ago the Legislature of New York granted to a 
man named Gibbons the sole right of using the Hudson river 
for traffic purposes between New York and Albany. For the 
greater part of its course the Hudson river lies within the ter- 
ritory of New Y^'ork State ; but after it passes the Palisades, on 
its way to the sea, it washes the shores of New Jersey. The 
grant made to Gibbons was on the assumption that where the 
river flowed between the States the sovereignty of New York 
extended clean across it to low-water line on the New Jersey 
shore. A Jerseyman named Ogden, inclined to dispute New 
York's right of eminent domain off the Jersey coast, set up a 
line in opposition to Gibbons, and started to run boats on the 
New Jersey side of the river between points on the Jersey shore. 
At Gibbons' instance, the New York State courts enjoined him 
from running his steamers, on the ground that his charter was 
in contravention of that which had been given by the New 
Y''ork Legislature. The position taken by the New York Slate 
authorities in defending the Gibbons grant was sustained by all 
(66) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 67 

of the New York courts, and Ogden succeeded in gaining the 
ascendancy only when the United States Supreme Court decided 
that the right of eminent domain in the river was shared by the 
States alike — that New York was supreme from her shore west- 
ward to the middle of the stream, and New Jersey supreme 
from her shore eastward to the middle of the stream. 

Having thus secured recognition to a title in the river, New 
Jersey naturally became interested to know what the character 
of that title was, and even as early in the history of the litiga- 
tion as that hints were thrown out that she had a title in the 
land under the water adverse even to that of the owners of the 
contiguous upland. 

To the lay mind it seems difficult to dissociate the idea of the 
ownership of the upland from the idea of the ownership of the 
fiea rights beyond. There could seem to be but little question 
that he who owns land right down to the water's edge is also 
the owner, as a matter of course, of whatever private rights can 
be reserved in the water that washes it. There are rights of 
navigation and transit and fishing in running streams or in 
bodies of water where the tide rises and falls, that must always 
be reserved for the public. That, everybody can understand ; 
but it is difficult to comprehend what system of logic can justify 
a stranger in stepping to a man's water front and claiming and 
exercising adverse rights in the submerged land that is appur- 
tenant to it. 

There had, however, been suggestions as early as 1845 that 
perhaps a shore-owner's rights might be limited to the land 
which he could see, and that the sovereignty over submerged 
land lay with the State. It was insisted that the State's title 
could be traced back to the King of England without a break, 
«,nd that the State succeeded to the domain which the kings had 
not specifically granted to private or corporate owners prior to 
the Revolution. But, perfect as her title was claimed to be, 
the State prudently abstained from an active invasion of the 
lands and contented herself with regulating the private use of 
the streams only so far as was necessary to prevent encroach- 
ments upon the public rights. 



68 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

The Wharf Act that was for many years in force was far from 
assuming that a stranger had a right to go to a man's shore front 
and extend a dock or pier from it into the river or bay ; it 
merely laid down the lines within which the ripa- owner must 
himself build. Its sole purpose was to protect the streams against 
invasions from the shore that might interfere with their flow or 
their proper use by the public for navigation and fishing pur- 
poses. It, indeed, enabled any shore-owner to appropriate the 
water rights beyond his water line by extending docks and piers^ 
Hosts of the shore-owners availed themselves of this privilege. 
Early in the seventies, James Hoey, of Trenton, and a Rah way 
associate desired to go beyond the designated filling line, and 
they applied to the Legislature for permission to do it. They 
expected this grant for nothing; but Senator Little, of Mon- 
mouth, and some of his colleagues, insisted that if the State- 
could confer a privilege of that kind she should be compensated 
for whatever rights she parted with to the applicants, and a dis- 
cussion that was bigger than the grant supervened. Hoey and 
his fellow- petitioners were backed by commanding influences itt 
the controversy, but Senator Little carried his point, and so was 
passed the first riparian bill that ever went through the New- 
Jersey Legislature.- 

It is doubtful if the State would ever have dared to have 
done more than to make these occasional grants beyond the solid- 
filling line if the scandalous contentions over the shore rights 
on the Hudson county front of the Hudson river had not 
made some police supervision of the river necessary. Dudley 8. 
Gregory, A. O. Zabriskie, afterwards Chancellor; Peter Bentley^ 
Commodore Stevens, John M. Cornelison and others interested 
with them, were purchasing uplands and absorbing the water 
privileges conferred by the Wharf act. They were partly 
moved by the speculative spirit and partly acting in the inter- 
est of the railroad corporations that were reaching out for every 
inch of submerged land that could be turned into solid ground ; 
and, even after the State had interposed her claims to under- 
water lands in order to protect them from these invasions, she 
found it necessary to invoke the love of the people for the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 69 

State's school system as a means of popularizing what many re- 
garded as an usurpation on her part, and to play a skillful 
game of bluff by way of giving fictitious value and strength to 
her title. The story of the methods those who interested them- 
selves in her behalf employed to establish her title to these great 
stretch^ of riparian front is one of exceptional interest. 

The railroad aggressions were due to the greed for terminal 
facilities close to the Metropolis, and it was, consequently, in the 
controversy between her and the railroads over the Hudson 
county shore front that the skillfully-developed propaganda of 
the State was first successfully set up. The Morris canal had, 
under the Wharf Act, built out into the bay off the Jersey 
City shore front and inclosed about forty acres of land. Ships 
had harbored there, and Senator Little called attention to this 
invasion of seamen's rights and precipitated the inquiry into the 
State's riparian rights. 

The Jersey Central was the first to attempt these systematic 
invasions, and the first to create the situation which enabled the 
statesmen of the Commonwealth to get in their big licks in her 
behalf for the ownership of the disputed territory. This com- 
pany had begun to exhibit the unhappy faculty of squatting 
upon valuable land that seemed to have no visible owner and 
appropriating it to its own use; and it had prepared in this 
way to take possession of the Jersey City shore front which lay 
on South or Cummunipaw Bay. The shore at that point was 
escalloped by the river, and a mud flat with an overlay of shal- 
low water extended for nearly a mile into the stream. The 
company prepared to fill in these flats and make solid ground to 
a point from which its piers and ferry slips could be easily ex- 
tended to the channel. It proposed to do this in defiance of the 
protests of the owners of the adjoining uplands — who claimed, of 
course, that their water rights extended into the river ; and, to 
armor itself with a colorable title against them, it conceived the 
idea of persuading the State to make a grant of the property. 

John Taylor Johnson was at that time its President, and 
through his agency a party of New York capitalists interested 
in the big corporation organized themselves into the American 




70 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Dock and Improvement Company. Their object was to secure 
from the Legislature a free grant of all the water frontage in 
Hudson county, extending from South Cove to Cavan Point. 

The State riparian zealots met the bill with the claim that 
the State herself had a title in this great water front that she 
could not be expected to give up for nothing ; and it was in 
the hope of popularizing this claim that she started the idea of 
devoting all moneys received from riparian grants to a great 
fund to be forever sacred to the maintenance of her free school 
system. 

The American Dock and Improvement Company was not to 
be balked by any such agitation as that, and persisted in its- 
efforts with the Legislature of 
1864 so successfully, that it 
boasted of no less than fourteen 
votes in the Senate for its bilL 
It was in this crisis, and the 
night before the vote was to be 
taken, that Augustus W. Cutler, 
Francis S. Lathrop and John L» 
N. Stratton, who were among 
the prime movers in the free 
school fund idea, sprang the 
proposition that seemed to give a 
Augustus w. cutler. j^g^j ^^^ tangible value to the 

State's claim. They made a pub- 
lic offer to buy for $1,000,000 the lands which the American 
Dock and Improvement Company were trying to take without 
price. Their formal offer appeared in three Trenton papers — the 
"State Gazette," "True American" and " Emporium "—the 
morning the vote was to be taken in the Senate. It was a stunner 
for the fourteen avowed advocates of the railroad bill. For,, 
where was the man who would dare vote to a party of foreigners 
for nothing a title for which native Jerseymen were willing to 
pay a round million ? And they halted for the consideration of 
a counter bill providing that the Legislature should make na 
grants of wa<^er front property until a commission consisting of 




Cortlandt Parker. 



72 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

J. R. Wortendyke, John Linn, Joseph T. CrowelJ, John L. N. 
Stratton and James B. Dayton had first determined the rights 
of the State in regard to the lands under water out to low tide. 

The opinions of lawyers were sought upon the question. The 
agitators of the State's rights were not satisfied that Attorney- 
General Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, who was himself counsel 
for the Dock and Improvement Company, would favor their 
contention, and on their behalf Mr. Cutler even solicited Gov- 
ernor Parker to name a special lawyer to investigate the sub- 
ject from their standpoint. Governor Parker was naturally 
delicate about acceding to this request. He regarded Mr. Fre- 
linghuysen's high character as a sufficient guarantee against a 
biased opinion; and Mr. Cutler and his associates themselves 
sought the written opinions of outside lawyers. One of these 
from ex- Attorney-General Browning, of Camden, and another 
from Cortlandt Parker, of Newark, sustained the State's title. 
The opinions of Attorney- General Frelinghuyssn and Coun- 
selor Abraham O. Zabriskie, afterwards Chancellor, who became 
rich through his traffic in these same disputed lands, declared, 
on the other hand, that the claim of the State was a practical 
invasion of private rights. 

The Jersey Central was forced by these means to pay be- 
comingly for the water rights it desired, aod the bill authorizing 
the State Riparian Commission to ascertain and declare the 
rights of the State passed. 

Robert C. Bacot, well known as an engineer in Jersey City, 
was instructed by the Commission to direct and superintend the 
surveys in the easterly part of the State; E. H. Sanders, of 
Camden, to superintend those on the Delaware front. The im- 
portant branch of the work was in the hands of Mr. Bacot, who 
was afterwards made the Engineer of the Commission and at the 
time of this writing still held the position. After careful in- 
quiry, the Commissioners decided that the title to the lands 
under tide-waters rested with the State, and that the property 
of the upland-owner did not extend beyond low- water line. It 
was cautious in asserting its prerogative, however, and gave the 
owners of lands situated along or upon tide- water, the privilege 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



73 




of building docks or wharves on the shore in front of their 
lands to low water mark, and when so built to appropriate 
them to their own uses. But the Commissioners quietly inti- 
mated they were " not prepared to take the lead in advising that 
the shore -owner has now by law an absolutely vested right to 
this preference." 

A memorable contention between the Matthieesen Sugar 
House people and the Morris Canal Company, gave the State a 
better opportunity to as- 
isert her title in an effective 
way, and she was not slow 
to seize it. The Sugar 
House had located at the 
foot of Washington street, 
in Jersey City for the 
water privileges that were 
accessible in the South 
■Cove. When the Jersey 
■Central began to fill in, 
in the Cove, the sugar 
refiners feared the de- 
struction of their harbor. 
They appealed to the 
State for a grant of the 
water rights. The Mor- 
ris Canal was already in 
possession of the same 

water rights, and in self- protection it opposed the Matthiessens' 
application with a demand that the State's title should be con- 
ferred on the canal company. A lively hustle for the pre- 
cedence supervened. The Morris Canal officials pulled the 
longer stroke with the State authorities, and the grant was given 
to them, but not till the sugar refiners had secured the insertion 
of a proviso that the waterway should be forever kept open, at 
the canal company's expense, for the traffic of their craft. 

When Jersey City subsequently made an attempt to extend 
Washington street across the water gap thus ordered to be kept 




Robert Gilchrist 



74 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

open, the Matthiessen folks attempted to interpose. The court 
declared that as they had no title there they had no standing as^ 
litigants. Equal to all emergencies, Robert Gilchrist, who was 
their counsel, induced Thomas N. McCarter, the Morris Canal 
Company's counsel, to interpose on behalf of the canal com- 
pany. The courts held that the city could not cross the Morris^ 
canal grant without damages. The award of a single dollar 
would have served to secure the right of way for the proposed 
street. It had not been made, and the city was defeated in her 
suit. The State's title in under- water lands was thus re- affirmed 
by the refusal of the courts to permit trespass upon the property 
of one of its riparian grantees.* 

A contention a few years later between the shore-owners, or 
some of them, and the New Jersey Railroad and Transpor- 
tation Company over the lands lying in Harsimus Cove, north 
of its passenger depots, opened another opportunity for a bold 
stroke to establish the State's right of occupancy. The company 
designed filling in the Cove as John Taylor Johnson had filled 
in the South Cove, and to make the " made ground " the site of 
a capacious freight yard. John Van Vorst and some of the 
other upland-owners were so tenacious of their sea rights, how- 
ever, that the company's scheme seemed impossible of fruition^ 
and a resort was had to the Legislature for adverse title. Like 
the Jersey Central the company expected to get the title for 
a song. 

But here again Judge Lathrop, Senator Cobb and ex-Senator 
Cutler sprang to the State's aid. James Gopsill, a portly and 
cultured gentlemen who in Brooklyn might have easily passed 

* The extension of Washington street was prompted by the Jersey Cen- 
tral's desire to make a more direct connection between its depot and railroad 
yards and the main portion of Jersey City. The Pennsylvania Kailroad 
Company, the Jersey Central's business rival, made common cause with the 
Sugar House people against the extension. The bridging of the Gap was for 
years the occasion of the bitterest conteniion between the two railroads in the 
Legislature. Unable, because the property-owners whose consents were 
needed as a preliminary to the extension were of adverse interest, to secure the- 
consent of owners of half the abutting property, the Jersey Central finally 
gave up the struggle as a hopeless one. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 75- 

for Henry Ward Beecher, was Mayor of Jersey City at the 
time. He had also interested himself in a scheme projected by 
Orestfs Cleveland and some others to lay out a boulevard 
through Hudson county, at an expense of $1,000,000. Mr. 
Cutler dropped down to see him one night while the Harsimus 
Cove grant was pending. 

" Here, Mayor," he said to the courtly Gopsill, " you repre- 
sent a city whose great water front has been absorbed by the 
railroad corporations. It has not a dock of its own. See what 
great wealth could be brought to it by the improvement, for its 
benefit, of the Harsimus front in the way the United Railroads 
are asking to improve it. It's a greater public benefit many 
times over than the boulevard in which you have interested 
yourself. Suppose, now, that you were to spend for the State's 
rights there the million dollars you hope to have the county 
spend upon the drive." 

Mr. Gopsill was not taken with the idea at the start ; but it 
grew into magnificent proportions as Mr. Cutler elaborated it, 
and finally the Mayor agreed to bestir himself to have Jersey 
City bid a million of dollars for the water grant the railroad 
company sought for a trifle. The next morning he called the 
Aldermen into hurried session, and before the Legislature had 
re-assembled Monday night, the city's counterbid was known all 
over the State. The result was that the railroad company went 
up in its price, and with the consent of all sides the determina- 
tion of the amount it should pay for the franchise it sought was 
submitted to the arbitrament of a commission. 

The State succeeded, in the end, in forcing the railroad to pay 
$500,000 for this water front ; and the enemies of the railroad 
company think they saw the signs that the company took imme- 
diate steps to get the money back again. 

" I was President of the Senate at that time," said Henry S. 
Little, in recounting the story of the subsequent movements, 
"and one day while I was in the chair a great stream of men, 
the railroad lobby among them, came rushing into the Senate. 
The Clerk of the House with a message for the Senate was at 
the head of the throng. I smelled a mouse at once, and when 



76 MODERN BATTLES OF TRElVTON. 

*Joe' Cornish, the Senate Secretary, handed up the message 
and asked me to rush it through, I made up my mind it would 
be a good thing to see what was in it first. Looking over the 
list of the bills it enumerated in which the Senate's concurrence 
was asked, I saw one that purported on its face to make an in- 
crease in the amount of the transit duties the Pennsylvania 
Railroad Company was paying to the State in lieu of taxes, and 
I made up my mind that that was the Ethiopian that I wanted 
to put my hand on. I slid the bill from the batch into my 
^iesk, and discovered, on reading it afterwards, that while it 
purported to increase the transit duties it really decreased them. 
It fixed a larger rate on merchandise that was least transported, 
but a lower rate on the bulk of its traffic. It took the State 
Treasurer, William P. McMichael, three or four days to cipher 
it out for me from the books. I found out that Governor Ran- 
dolph was committed to the passage of that bill, and that Sena- 
tor Cobb, of Morris, was disposed to favor it. There were 
conferences between John Stevens, General Robert Stockton 
and myself, at which they tried to persuade me to consent to 
the passage of that act, but I argued so firmly against it that 
Cobb finally came to my side ; and the result was an agreement 
that the act should be amended so as to provide that the transit 
duties of the future should never be lower in amount than those 
which the company had paid the year before. That amount 
was $298,000, and that was the sum which the company paid 
into the State treasury annually afterwards till the Abbett tax 
law went into operation in 1884." 

Two handsome bids had now been made for the State's under- 
water title ; and naturally the belief that there must be ground 
for the claim that had forced them, grew apace; and before 
Theodore F. Randolph vacated the Governorship — to which 
he had succeeded in 1869 — there was something of a sentiment 
in favor of the bold assertion by the State of her absolute title 
in the lands. Mr. Randolph, when he represented Hudson 
in the Senate, during the earlier stages of the controversy, 
had stood in opposition to the encroachments upon private 
rights the riparian movement stood for. But, besides losing 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 77 

his local interest in Hudson affairs through his removal ta 
Morris county, he had now as Governor some ambitious 
schemes that might be aided by the establishment of the State's 
title, and he made a noticeable change of front on the question. 

The attack, as far as it had now gone, was entirely upon the 
water front on the Hudson river and New York bay, and it 
was not long before the rest of the State began to see how rich 
the Commonwealth could become at the expense of her river 
counties. At that time the expenses of the State government 
were paid by a tax imposed upon all the counties. Governor 
Randolph made the plea that the State was in need of funds ; 
and twenty of its counties were selfishly willing to get the 
needed money at the expense of the twenty- first. Judge Lath- 
rop drew a bill extending the prerogatives of the State Riparian 
Commission and investing it with full authority to do whatever 
it pleased in the way of the sale or lease of the under-water 
lands, and Governor Randolph bent all the energies of his ad- 
ministration toward securing its passage. 

Hudson was stirred by the movement as she never had been 
stirred before. But the only concession the promoters of the 
bill would make to her was in the shape of a proviso that the 
owner of the shore front should be privileged for six months to 
purchase the adjacent water rights before they could be sold to- 
a stranger. This was wrung from them by Mr. Abbett, who 
was then representing one of the Hudson districts in the Assem- 
bly. In the first commission appointed under this act, Mr. 
Lathrop, its Chairman, and Mr. Cutler, its Secretary, were the 
active spirits. Its first report boasted of the State's windfall, in 
noting that the distance from Enyard's dock, near Bergen Point, 
northward through the Kill- von- Kull, and thence along the line 
of New York bay and the Hudson river to the boundary of 
the State of New York, was thirty- two miles. Of this, four 
miles had been granted at the time the report was made for 
$1,250,000, and the Commission estimated that from the part 
not yet disposed of an additional three or four millions of dollars 
might be realized. 

The State now lost no time in fortifying itself by an appeal to 



78 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the courts. The Paterson and Newark Railroad Company, under 
cover of a grant from the Riparian Board, extended its line 
upon a strip of territory between high and low- water mark in 
front of the shore owned by Frederick A. Stevens, in Jersey 
City, and Chief Justice Beasley, in December, 1870, ruled that 
the State's deed gave it the right to go there. This decision not 
only laid down the rights of the State to the guarantees to the 
water front, but has been accepted as an exposition of the law 
governing riparian properties by the judiciary of many other 
States; and the State Riparian Board, in the hope of battering 
down the public prejudice against its assumptions, never made 
a report for five years that failed to recite it. 

The idea of Governor Randolph and Judge Lathrop and 
their associates in promoting the passage of the bill, was to pro- 
vide money for public purposes. The current expense account 
was to be recouped by it, and they had their eye also upon the 
erection of the big asylum at Morris Plains. But the establish- 
ment of the riparian titles put an implied contract upon the 
State to devote the proceeds to the maintenance of the schools. It 
was in the interest of a school fund, indeed, that the successful cam- 
paign had been made. Educational zealots agreed that the large 
increase of income which the State was to realize from the sale 
and lease of her riparian properties would only incite to public 
jobbery and extravagance unless some useful channel were pro- 
vided for it ; and they insisted that that was an additional rea- 
son why the State should keep her engagement with the people. 
A clause in the Constitution, which provided that the fund for 
the support of free schools and all accretions to it should be 
sacredly hoarded, seemed to contemplate the establishment of a 
fund that would make the schools free without a tax on the 
people. And these devotees, ambitious to make the free school 
system of the State its proudest institution and to establish it 
on a basis of financial independence that would remove it from 
the remotest peril, insisted that the riparian moneys should be 
devoted to the accumulation of such a fund. 

Assemblyman Nathaniel Niles, of Morris, became their 
spokesman, and he introduced an act perpetually appropriating 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 79 

the moneys to the support of the public schools. Their calcu- 
lation was that eventually the fund would reach such an amount 
that the income from its investment would pay all the expenses 
attending the maintenance of the schools and make possible the 
education of the youth of the State without expense to their 
parents. The people would probably allow a very excellent in- 
stitution that would cost them nothing to stand without dis- 
turbance; and the theory upon which the advocates of the bill 
went was that, if the 
schools were main- 
tained without taxa- / 
tion, the free system 
would exist forever. mjk^ 

The purpose for ^Br ^..^ ^ 

which the communi- ' g 

ties in some of the ^"".^ ^ H^H^ ' 

rural parts of the "^fe^ '^"""^ d; 

State most dislike to ^P' ^ 

go down into their 
pockets, is this very ..^tttli^fk 

noble one of educat- j^f^j^^^^^R^-^' <' 
ing th^ir children. ^^^^^^^^m^/^J^' 
There has been more l^^^HI I 
friction between the ^ 
counties over the ad- 
justmentof the school ' 

tax than over any Nathaniel NUes. 

other public function. 

Schools in the poorer and smaller counties are, even to this day, 
maintained largely at the expense of the richer and more popu- 
lous counties. The tax is collected by the State from each 
county on the basis of its wealth, and redistributed to each 
county on the basis of its children ; and so it is that Essex and 
Hudson, which have more dollars than babies, contribute to the 
educational demands of Cape May and Ocean, which have more 
babies than dollars. The less rich and populous counties are 
eternally beating their brains for devices to evade as much as 



80 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

possible their school taxes, and impose the maintenance of their 
schools upon the more wealthy counties. 

Mr. Niks shrewdly utilized this aversion of the rural tax- 
payer when he came to canvas? for votes for his bill. He 
showed the rural Assemblyman how every dollar paid into the 
fund would measurably lighten the school tax bill of his con- 
stituents and easily persuaded the Assemblyman that the inter- 
ests of his people required that he should vote for it. Governor 
Randolph and Judge Lathrop, as might have been expected, 
opposed it ; and the Governor even endeavored to persuade him 
to withdraw it. But he refused to yield and forced it to a vote. 

The opposition of such shining lights as the Governor and 
the Judge solidified the Democratic vote against it, but both 
Houses were Republican, and it was sent to the Governor for 
approval. It encountered his veto, but after it had been 
thoroughly discussed the Democrats concluded that they might 
as well turn in and help it through, and with the Republicans 
they voted for it. And so the bill became a law. 

The appropriation of these moneys to the support of the public 
schools was the step that gave the system of free education the 
cover of State protection. There had been a State Board of 
Education, and Professor Ellis A. Apgar had been State School 
Superintendent since 1866. He found the schools under the 
supervision of 230 Township Superintendents ; they were mainly 
dependent for their support upon township tax, and were not 
even required to be free. It was upon his recommendation 
that an act was passed in 1871 forbidding charges for tuition in 
the public schools^ and it was he who perfected the system by 
which a State tax was imposed everywhere for the maintenance 
of the schools — being first collected by the State and redis- 
tributed among the communities according to their needs. 

When Professor Addison B. Poland was promoted from the 
City School Superintendency of Jersey City to the State School 
Superintendency, he saw that the established system was still sus- 
ceptible of improvement, and created a widespread commotion — 
of short duration happily — while he made it. He found the State 
divided into innumerable school districts — a district wherever 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



81 



there was a school-house — and a noticeable inequality in the 
matter of attendance and eflBciency. The State paid a bonus to 
the counties for each of the school districts, and some of the 
more greedy counties had, in order to capture it, established 
more school districts than their school population demanded. 
There were indeed 
some school dis- 
tricts to which the 
allowance was made 
that had an inap- 
preciably small 
population; and 
one of the enume- 
rators, instructed to 
make a canvass of 
h i 8 district for 
school chil dren, 
amused the State 
in 1893 by report- 
ing that the school 
population in that 
district had been 
confined to the chil- 
dren of a single 
family, that the 
school- room had 
been in one of the 
family apartments, 

and that the family had finally wiped the district off the school 
map by moving away. 

Mr. Poland had been tutored in school methods in Massa- 
chusetts, and the system which prevailed there had struck him 
as being one that, with proper modifications, could be adapted 
to the re- organization of the school districts in the State. The 
operation of the system was to consolidate the school districts 
and reduce their number. The new grouping was made on such 
lines that schools that had been poorly attended and meagerly 

6 





f*»^tr y^ 






■s 






i.. 






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- i% 






d|f§P ^^^ 
















_^ 


iffinfi - ' '^'' •''^^H^^t*^ 




■^^H 




1^ 


V 'j^^^^^B 




P 




-^^^^^^^^^^ 


f 



Addison B. Poland. 



82 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

supported were provided with a larger circle from which to 
recruit their classes and with more adequate means for the 
employment of proper instructors and the maintenance of higher 
school standards. 

The effect of the act when it had been passed by the Legis- 
lature of 1894, was to turn out of their places about three thou- 
sand five hundred school district trustees, who had held their 
positions so long that they had come to look upon them 
as their personal property, and, of course, the air became vocal 
with their protests against the innovation. There were loud 
demands for the repeal, or, at any rate, the essential modifica- 
tion of the law ; but by the time a new Legislature was ready to 
go to the reconsideration of the matter, the new plan had so 
commended itself to the judgment of the real friends of the 
schools throughout the State that it was allowed to stand practi- 
cally untouched. The beneficial results become more and more 
manifest every day, and the only direction in which the new 
system is likely to be touched is in that of embellishment and 
improvement. 

Each succeeding administration attempted to wipe off the 
statute-books the act donating the riparian funds to the estab- 
lishment of a free- educational system. They urged that the 
money was needed for public purposes, and that the State could 
not afford to tie up so vast a sum for a mere theoretical end. 
Governor Parker, who succeeded Randolph, led the first at- 
tack, and each Governor after that time renewed it, but always 
without success, till Abbett went to the Governorship for his 
second term. 

Governor Abbett insidiously prepared the public mind for 
the final coup. His first feint against it was made in the shape 
of a recommendation in his annual message of 1885, that "the 
expenses of the Riparian Commission ought to be paid out of the 
receipts before the money is placed in the school fund, because 
these expenses are necessary to secure and protect this riparian 
income." By the time the Legislature of 1887 met, he was 
more urgent on this point, and advised the passage of an act of 
that purport. When he came to the Governorship for the 




■~x 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 83 

second time, in 1890, he had in mind the establishment of an 
autocracy which could not be supported out of the limited income 
the State then had, and for the purpose of making up the defi- 
ciency, he came out flat-footed with a demand for the diversion 
of the fund " for the payment of the indebtedness of the State 
and to meet absolutely necessary appropriations." 

" We owe over half a million dollars," he said in elaboration 
of his plea. " We have property which we are selling, the pro- 
ceeds of which would gradually enable us to liquidate this in- 
debtedness. Is it not financial wisdom, and for the best 
interests of the State, to use the revenue from this source to meet 
the obligations of the State? 
This proposition does not touch 
the school fund as it now exists ; 
that is protected by the pro- f 

visions of the Constitution. All 
that legislation on this subject 
could do would be to devote •"' \, 

money which arises from this . # 

source by future sales and leases 
to the payment of State obliga- 
tions. I recommend to the 
Legislature to pledge the '^ 

money to be derived from the 

lands in the future to State Major E. J. Anderson. 

purposes." 

The suggestion that these moneys might be made available 
for general State purposes had originated with Major Edward 
J. Anderson, who had been promoted from the Deputy Comp- 
trollership to be Comptroller himself, and was a recognized 
power in Republican councils. He urged that it was chimerical 
to look forward to the time when the accumulations of the fund 
from riparian sales would produce a capital that, invested, would 
yield enough money to free the State from the school tax ; that 
up to that time the fund had grown only to $3,500,000, and 
that the income from it yielded but an inappreciable proportion 
of the moneys spent on the schools ; that because of the growth 



84 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



of population, and of the ever-increasing demand for new school 
facilities, it could never do more for the school system than it 
was doing at that time, and that it was, therefore, Utopian to 
nurse the fund any longer with the idea that it could be made 
to pay the expense of maintaining a universal free school 
system. 

In the second place, he was against the policy of maintain- 
ing a large fund in idleness. Unwise investments or corrupt 
investments might waste it. And in the third place, the 
State was borrowing money, had lodged its own note with 
the managers of the fund for advances, and was, therefore,, 
practically paying interest on its own money. Governor 
Abbett welcomed these pretexts that placed a new fund at the 
service of his glittering retinue of State functionaries. He had 
but to hold up his hand to the men who were serving in the 
Senate and the House at the time ; and the act appropriating the 
riparian receipts to the current expense account went through 
both Houses in a twinkling, and received his signature the 
moment it reached him. 

The diversion was, however, of short duration. The school 
fund had come to be looked upon by the people as a sacred 
trust, and the signs of popular displeasure were everywhere 
manifest; and when the State conventions of the two parties 
met in Trenton in the following fall to select candidates for 
Governor, both were forced to unanimously adopt resolutions 
declaring for the integrity of the State's school fund, and 
pledging the party to a repeal of Governor Abbett's law. The 
repealer went through at the next session of the Legislature 
without any opposition. 

The diversion of this income from the use of the schools was 
not the only ambitious project in connection with the riparian 
lands to which Governor Abbett devoted himself. Toward the 
close of his second administration he attempted to secure legisla- 
tion looking to the filling in of the reefs extending from Ellis 
Island to Robbins' Reef Lighthouse, oiF the Jersey shore, and the 
erection of a line of piers and warehouses upon the artificial 
island thus erected and a sale of the whole plant to those who 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 85 

might make use of it. The Governor claimed that this im- 
provement would be worth $5,000,000 to the State treasury. 
The Legislature passed the act which he drew, but the United 
States Government defeated its execution, after the interchange 
of diplomatic communications between Washington and Tren- 
ton, by a ruling that the State's exterior filling line did not ex- 
tend as far out from the shore as the Governor's enterprise con- 
templated. There was always an idea that a railroad syndicate 
stood ready to buy the State's title to the reefs, and Governor 
Abbett is himself the authority for the statement that he could 
have sold the island for a vast sum of money before the close of 
his executive term if the project could have been carried to 
fruition. 

The establishment of State school libraries, under an act of 
Mr. Niles, was one of the incidents of the discussion over the 
school fund. Mr. Niles had become satisfied, from the tone of 
their talk, that his fellow- members in the House and Senate 
would resist any attempt to support libraries for the schools with 
tax money, and he drew an act for their maintenance with gift 
money. It provided whenever $20 should be raised by gift in 
any school district, the State should make other gifts to match 
other contributions described in the bill. At the time of the 
passage of this act there was not a free public library in the 
State. Now, as the result of it, even every little famished 
school district in the State has its own library. Mr. Niles' esti- 
mate is that $250,000 has been invested in these little collections 
of books, and private contributions have been so encouraged by 
the promise of the State's assistance, that of this quarter million 
total less than $50,000 has come from public funds. Mr. Niles 
iilways maintained a lively interest in these libraries, and with 
his own hands had prepared the catalogues from which they 
have been made. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Which shows how the Picturesque Pursuit op the Kascally City 
Treasurer of Jersey City into Mexico Contributed to 
the Movement for a Constitutional Conven- 
tion AND A System of General Laws. 




I^AVING, as they believed, perpetuated their ascendency 
in the Assembly through the agency of the gerry- 
mander, the Republicans now sought to acquire con- 
trol of the government of the cities. This was not a 
difficult thing to accomplish in some of the cities, where alder- 
manic gerrymanders were employed to produce majorities in the 
elective governing boards ; but there were others where the 
Democratic majority was so pronounced that even this choice 
scheme of disfranchisement gave no hope of overcoming it. 
Jersey City was one of them. A party of speculating Republi- 
can contractors had set their eyes upon her treasury, and were 
now besieging the Legislature of 1871 for a charter that would 
be favorable to them. They found a pretext for a change in 
the disfavor into which the existing Democratic regime had 
fallen, and set on foot, through the agency of pliant newspaper 
organs, a public agitation for it. At that time all the functions 
of local government — the management of the police and fire 
departments, the care of the thoroughfares, the making of public 
improvements, the collection and disbursement of the municipal 
moneys, in fact, everything relating to the public interest — were 
administered by the Mayor and an elected Board of Aldermen. 
It was impossible to gerrymander this board into the hands of 
the Republicans, and an entire overhauling of the municipal 
system was decided upon. But they were puzzled to know how, 
after they had got rid of the obstructive board, they could juggle 
the public offices into their own hands. 
(86) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 87 

Jonathan Dixon was at that time of the law firm of Dixon & 
Collins. He was recognized as one of the most skillful lawyers 
in the northern section of the State. Like the advocates of a 
change, he was a Republican, and they retained him to draw a 
bill that would aid them to their ends. In due course he 
evolved from his subtle brain the draft of an act that took out 
of the hands of the people absolutely the selection of their public 
servants, and consequently the control of their local affairs, and 
established, in the place of the popular representative boards that 
had been managing the municipality, a series of department 
commissions whose members were to be chosen by the Republi- 
can joint meetings of the Legislature. Those at whose instance 
the act was prepared were, of course, potential with the Assem- 
blymen and Senator representing the city at Trenton ; and the 
advice of these representatives, known as the local caucus, would, 
in the ordinary course of legislation, be law to the general caucus 
as to all matters pertaining to their locality. To explain : The 
general caucus is made up of all the Senators and Assemblymen 
of one party. The Senator from Cape May is not supposed to know 
anything of Jersey City's requirements as to men or measures, 
and consequently the request of the Jersey City representatives 
that certain officials be named, or certain enactments be passed, 
for Jersey City, is accepted as a matter of course in the general 
caucus. Thus, by controlling, as they expected to, the repre- 
sentatives of Jersey City in the two Houses, the Jersey City 
syndicate of office-seekers was able to name to the general caucus 
of the Legislature its own men as local rulers in the city, and 
to put them in office. 

Counselor Dixon's new charter wiped out the entire Demo- 
cratic city government, and established in its place a retinue of 
local boards for his partisan clients to thus name through the 
local caucus to the general caucus, and through the general 
caucus to the joint meeting. It established a Board of Works 
to be appointed by the Republican joint meeting, a Police 
Board to be appointed by joint meeting, a Fire Board to be 
appointed by joint meeting, a Finance Board to be appointed 
by joint meeting ; and, while it left the Board of Aldermen, 



88 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

sure to be Democratic by the voice of the people, standing, 
it divested it of every public function, except that possibly of 
granting licenses to saloon-keepers. This scheme of govern- 
ment made it possible for the Republican syndicate to impose 
upon Jersey City a whole raft of partisan placemen in the 
choice of whom the people had not the faintest possible voice, 
and who, if they had sought their offices through an election, 
might have suffered overwhelming defeat. Its effect was, as 
the result showtd, to hand the municipal government — its taxes, 
its property and its improvements — over to an ambitious crowd 
of money- seekers. 

The Democrats, in 1870, had set the precedent for legisla- 
tion of this character by the introduction of several bills 
providing for the naming of local officers in joint meeting. 
Among the others was one deposing the Republican elective 
Police Commission in Newark and giving the control of the 
department into the hands of Andrew A. Smalley, Herman 
Schalk, John Dwyer and David Anderson, who were named, 
in the bill as a Police Commission in its stead. That act 
was railroaded through. Introduced on the night of January 
25th, it was passed to second reading the following morning and 
to third reading at the afternoon session of the Assembly. As- 
semblymen Gurney and Bonsall made ineffectual protests against 
the indecorous haste with which it was being pushed, and after 
the completion of the third reading, Wilson, of Essex, made 
the point that it was not rulable to advance a bill two stages in 
one day ; but Speaker Abbett silenced him with an autocratic 
decision that his objection was too late to be parliamentary — that 
" the gentleman should have objected while it was being read." 
When it reached the Senate, it was treated to the same kind of 
rapid transit. Senator Taylor, of Essex, attempted to substi- 
tute the names of other gentlemen for those in the bill, but 
Senator Noah D. Taylor, of Hudson, objected, and it went 
through in the shape in which it had come from the House. 

The Jersey City act, fashioned on the same lines, was intro- 
duced into the Legislature by Assemblyman George H. Farrier. 
When it came up for discussion in the House, Assemblyman 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 89 

Coogan led a fight against its enactment. Assemblyman George 
W. Patterson, of Monmouth, one of the most erratic but bril- 
liant men who served in the halls of legislation at that time, 
urged the submission of the act, before it should become operative, 
to the people of the city. Assemblyman James F. Fielder op- 
posed that proposition, and Patterson, assured of the popular 
unacceptability of the measure, volunteered to modify his amend- 
ment so that the act should become operative if only a third, or 
even a quarter, of the residents supported it by their ballots. 
Assemblyman Hornblower interposed the technical objection 
that the Legislature had no right to delegate its power in that 
way, and the bill was whipped through both Houses with 
hardly creditable speed. 

The ring that took possession of Jersey City under it made 
the purposes of its formation known in its acts almost as soon 
as it reached the public offices. Every scheme of public im- 
provement was a job for the enrichment of some of its mem- 
bers. Money was squandered right and left. Tax rates were 
screwed up to their highest point, and the public debt increased 
a million at a jump. These methods brought the administra- 
tion into such popular disfavor all over the State, in course of 
time, that a committee was sent by the Legislature to Jersey 
City to investigate the scandals of its rule, but when they 
reached the town they were taken into camp by the ring mana- 
gers and wined and dined by Commissioners Gregory, Martin, 
Pritchard and others till they were in a complacent humor, and 
their eyes were willingly closed to all they might have seen. 

The condition of things grew to be so notoriously bad that 
Governor Joel Parker was provoked into a special message call- 
ing attention to the need of relieving legislation, and the " State 
Gazette," the " Newark Courier " and other Republican papers 
denounced their methods as robbery. Senator McPherson, then 
representing Hudson county, made an attempt to restore popular 
government by the introduction of acts making the commissions 
elective. Not one of his Republican colleagues dared to brave 
public opinion by going squarely to the defense of the ringsters. 
But for the purpose of preserving the status that the Ring had 



90 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

created, they resorted to the old expedient of meeting every 
movement for a change by proposing something more liberal, 
which they, of course, had no idea of enacting. So when Mr. 
McPherson's bill taking from the joint meeting the right to 
appoint the local ofl&cials and vesting the people with their 
selection, reached the point of consideration in the Senate, he 
was confronted by petitions, evidently gotten up under the aus- 
pices of the ringsters, for other bills making an even more radi- 
cal uprooting of the vicious system prevailing there. Under 
the pretense that they desired to reserve their support for these 
more liberal measures, the Republican Senators with the excep- 
tion of Taylor, of Essex, and Conover voted against the Mc- 
Pherson bill and defeated it. Beesley, Belden, Bettle, Havens^ 
Hewitt, Hopkins, Irick, Jarrard, Moore, Shepard and Williams 
cast the eleven adverse ballots that settled its fate. 

The bill which they ostensibly favored, and in the interest of 
which they claimed to have defeated McPherson's bill, not only 
restored the right of local self-government to the people, but 
wiped out all the commissions, and replaced the old-time gov- 
ernment of the city by a Mayor and a Board of Aldermen. The 
Republican House members were making a noisy pretense of 
pushing a measure .of that kind, and the Senators chose to take 
the view that it would come to them from the other chamber 
for concurrence. The lash of public sentiment stung the House 
members into the consideration of a lot of demanded amend- 
ments to the city charter, but they engaged in a pre-arranged 
quarrel as to which should go through, and kept the whole sub- 
ject hung up till at the end of the session nothing had been 
done, and the city's unwelcome invaders were left in undisturbed 
possession. Meanwhile the people had started in pursuit of the 
Ring through other avenues, and the excesses of the ringsters 
themselves helped to point out to the whole Commonwealth the 
impolicy and danger of committing the conduct of local affairs 
to irresponsible agents named by the Legislature and boards 
made up of men in whose selection the people had no voice, but 
whose rule, however obnoxious, the communities were obliged 
to submit to. Some members of the Board of Works were in- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 91 

dieted for fraud in connection with the purchase of real estate 
needed for the city's use, and the members of the Police Com- 
mission were brought up with a round turn for malfeasances of 
other kinds. 

These convictions served to draw the attention of the State to 
the corrupt condition of things in Jersey City and to emphasize 
the idea that that kind of a government established over the 
heads of the people was not the most perfect system of 
municipal government imaginable. But a few months later the 
State was treated to a more picturesque object-lesson on the sub- 
ject, consequent upon the disappearance from the City Hall of 
Alexander Hamilton, the ring City Treasurer, with thousands 
of the city's money. Police Inspector Benjamin F. Murphy's 
romantic pursuit of him among the outlaws of lower Texas and 
Mexico served to bring the system he represented into the 
brighter glare of publicity. Because of its importance in giv- 
ing drift to public discussion, as well as for its own intrinsic 
interest, the details of this incident are worth narrating. 

Hamilton was a low-lived fellow, given to evil associations, 
and the first notion, when it was learned that he was missing, 
was that he had gone off on a bit of a spree with Winetta Mon- 
tague, a vivacious variety actress who had recently appeared 
upon the boards of a Jersey City theatre. His continued 
absence and the discovery that he had robbed the treasury soon 
led to the conviction, however, that if he had gone with her he 
had gone to stay. 

The first tidings of his whereabouts were brought several 
months later, in a dispatch received by Chief of Police Benjamin 
Champney, of Jersey City, from a constable named Carson, in 
Brownsville, Texas. A stage- driver, who had just come into 
Brownsville from Corpus Christi, told the story of an anxious 
traveler who had tried to board his coach. 

" My business is urgent," this stranger had said, when he 
feared that for want of room he might not be admitted to the 
coach, " and I must reach Mexico at once if it costs a fortune." 

A desperado named Hutchinson who overheard him volun- 
teered to take him to Mexico for a hundred dollars, and when 



92 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Hamilton accepted him for an escort, Hutchinson took his 
cousin, Thomas Parker, who was the Chief of Police of Corpus 
Christi and just as bad a man as himself, into his confidence. 
These two, before starting out with him, sent couriers ahead to 
notify outlaw confederates of theirs that they had a rich victim 
in tow, and when Hamilton had been carried forty miles beyond 
the town, Parker and three pals who joined him overpowered 
him and took $7,500 in cash from him. Hamilton had cun- 
ningly concealed the rest of his plunder, and, believing that they 
had stripped him of all he had, they handed him over to Pedro 
Manuel, one of their gang, and ordered him to conduct him 
into Mexico. 

" If he doesn't reach Mexico safely," Parker cautioned Pedro 
as he parted from him, " we'll take your brother's life in Corpus 
Christi." 

Pedro, on reaching Brownsville with his charge, boasted of 
the robbery on the plains ; and a woman whose husband he had 
killed, overhearing him, confided the story to Chief Carson. 
Carson at once surmised that the traveler was no other than the 
missing Jersey City defaulter and hastened to notify the Jersey 
City police. Inspector Benjamin F. Murphy was fitted out 
with railroad passes within an hour after the dispatch arrived 
and sent in pursuit. When he reached Indianola, he learned of 
the Corpus Christi incident and employed a boatman to carry 
him across the bay to that town. 

" May I leave my satchel with you ?" he asked of the seaman 
when he was preparing to depart. 

" Oh, yes," laughed the boatman, with cheerful good nature. 
"The other night I had the valise of the Treasurer of New 
Jersey, with a million in it, for a piller. If I'd a known on 
it, there'd a' bin another cap'n on this ferry to-day." 

When Murphy reached Corpus Christi, he learned that all 
the officials and outlaws of the region were after Hamilton to 
rob him in their various ways. Hamilton, himself realizing 
that he had fallen among a lot of thieves, had, meanwhile, 
offered a notorious outlaw, known as " Happy Jack," any 
amount of money to protect him, and " Happy Jack " had 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 93 

handed him over to Cortinas, a famous Mexican bandit who had 
just proclaimed himself Mayor of Matamoras. Inspector Mur- 
phy was disposed to have an interview with Cortinas at once, 
but a native advised him to wait for a few minutes, till a pend- 
ing revolution was over. His curiosity, of course, prompted 
him to go to the City Hall, which was the center of excitement 
at the time, and he found it in the possession of a lot of the 
most desperate- looking thugs and cut- throats he had ever seen 
in his life. 

" Who demands possession of this town from me now ? " 
Cortinas shouted, stepping proudly into their midst. " Click," 
" click," " click," was the response. A hundred cocked pistols 
showed that his gang was prepared for any man who dared to 
dispute his authority. If there was one there to say him " nay," 
he was silent, prudently under the circumstances, and Cortinas 
commanded an easy acquiescence in his usurpation. After wit- 
nessing this entertaining exhibition of political methods in Mexico, 
Murphy concluded that it would be wise to have company when 
he went to see Cortinas, and he took Colonel Corbin, who was 
then in command of Fort Brown, Texas, and United States 
Consul Wilson with him. Cortinas was in his adobe hut, just 
outside the city, at the time of their visit. Hamilton was there 
too, but concealed from view behind portieres. When Murphy 
made his demand, Cortinas pretended never to have heard of 
the fugitive, and it was so plain in all their subsequent nego- 
tiations that the outlaw intended to keep Hamiliton under his 
wing as long as he had a dollar to hand up, that Murphy aban- 
doned all hope of bringing him home, and came home himself. 

A couple of months later, the bell of Murphy's house door 
rang, and the servant announced that a man with the aspect of 
a tramp wanted to see him. When Murphy stepped to the door, 
who should be there but Hamilton, shabby and broken-spirited, 
and come to surrender himself into the hands of the law ! Cor- 
tinas had " protected " him out of every dollar he had, then 
shipped him to Brazil in a sailing vessel, and left him there to 
make his way home as best he could. A few days later, he was 



94 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

taken before Judge Bedle. His plea of guilty was entered, and 
a sentence of three years' imprisonment was imposed upon him. 

These convictions and this picturesque pursuit of Hamilton 
served admirably to point the moral for the opponents of the 
system of legislative commissions. The agitation for the passage 
of a general law to settle disputes between rival railroad cor- 
porations had served to suggest a like remedy for the protection 
of the municipalities against the abuses of public functions that 
were making Jersey City a public scandal. If it were politic 
to do away with special legislation in the interest of specified 
railroad syndicates, why not more politic to put an end to the 
possibility of such special laws as these that had placed this 
luckless community at the mercy of a gang of looters who hap- 
pened to have the ear of the Legislature? So there came to be 
a pronounced sentiment all over the State in favor of the gov- 
ernment of cities and counties and of the regulation of all other 
interests that could be so regulated, by a system of general laws. 

This could be accomplished, however, only by an amendment 
to the State Constitution or by the adoption of a new Constitu- 
tion. A new Constitution can be framed by a convention of 
delegates chosen directly, under authority of the Legislature, by 
the people. Upon its completion the work of the convention 
must be submitted to popular vote for acceptance or rejection, 
and in the event of its acceptance by the electors it supersedes the 
old instrument and becomes at once the organic law of the State. 
Authority for a Constitutional Convention is not, however, an 
easy thing to secure from New Jersey Legislatures. The Senate, 
since 1846, has stood resolutely against it, because of a fear that 
the making of a new Constitution would interfere with the basis 
of Senate representation. The present Constitution limits each 
county to one Senator without regard to its size ; and in the de- 
liberations of the Senate, Cape May, with its less than 12,000 
people, has as much voice as Essex with her more than 300,000, 
or Hudson with her 275,000. The larger counties have long 
contended that this disproportionate system of representation 
should be remedied, and if they could get a Constitutional Con- 
vention they would doubtless see to it that the Senate is made 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 95 



more equably representative. But the smaller counties, which 
are monstrously over-represented, outnumber the larger counties, 
which are as monstrously under- represented, two to one, and 
their determination to preserve their unfair preponderance in 
the Senate is the explanation of the intrepidity with which the 
Senate has for fifty years defeated all attempts to make a new 
Constitution. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



Which is a Shobt Chapter Devoted to the Salient Points of the 
Constitutional Commission. 




''/^j^OVERNOR PARKER, however, determined to force 
^^ the issue. He doubtless saw that there was no possi- 
bility of achieving anything through a suggestion for 
a Constitutional Convention, but in his message, sub- 
mitted at the opening of the Legislature in 1873, he neverthe- 
less made bold to propose it. 

" The State Constitution should require general laws," he 
wrote, " and forbid the enactment of all special or private laws 
embracing subjects where general laws can be made applicable." 

And then he called attention to the enormous volume of 
special and private laws that each Legislature turned out. 

"The general public laws passed at the last session," he 
remarked, " are contained in about one hundred pages of the 
printed volume of Sessional Laws, while the special and private 
laws occupy over one thousand two hundred and fifty pages of 
the same book." 

He recommended a Constitutional Convention to put an end to 
this unwholesome system of legislation, and urged that the making 
of irrevocable grants of special privileges to individuals or corpo- 
rations, such as had been made to the old Camden and Amboy 
monopoly and other railroads which had also set up the claim 
that favorable legislation granted to them in their early days was 
in the nature of a contract between them and the State, should 
be forbidden, and that the new Constitution should require equal 
taxation and general laws for the government of the municipali- 
ties of the State. The two Houses to which this message was 
submitted were both, it may be observed in passing, Republican, 
fourteen of the twenty-one Senators and forty-four of the 
(96) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



97 




sixty Assemblymen being of that faith. They had organizec^ 
by the selection of John W. Taylor, of Essex, as the presiding 
officer of the Senate, with John F. Babcock as its Secretary, and 
of Isaac L. Fisher, of Middlesex, as Speaker of the Houee, 
with Sinnickson Chew as Clerk. 

The recommendation was acted upon by the Legislature later 
in the session. For the reason already explained, the suggestion 
that the revision be made by a Constitutional Convention 
was not accepted, but 
the House authorized the 
Governor to appoint a 
special commission to pro- 
pose amendments to the 
existing Constitution. 

The amendment of the 
Constitution by this 
method left it within the 
power of the Senate to 
protect itself against all 
attempts to disturb the 
basis of representation. 
By its own terms the 
Bill of Rights can be 
amended only by the 
concurrent action of two 
Legislatures and the sub- 
sequent ratification of the 

people. If the Senate were dissatisfied — or if either House were 
dissatisfied — with any amendment such a commission might pro- 
pose, it could easily defeat its incorporation into the Constitution 
by refusing to submit it to popular vote. 

The Constitutional Commission consisted of John F. Bab- 
cock, of Middlesex ; Benjamin F. Carter, of Gloucester ; Au- 
gustus W. Cutler, of Morris; Philemon Dickinson, of Mercer; 
Dudley S. Gregory, of Hudson; Jacob L. Swayze, of Sussex; 
Robert Gilchrist, of Hudson ; Samuel H. Grey, of Camden ; 
George J. Ferry, of Essex ; Robert S. Green, of Union ; Joseph 

7 





John W. Taylor. 



98 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

Thompson, of Somerset; John W. Taylor, of Essex ; John C. 
Ten Eyck ; Benjamin Buckley, of Passaic; and Abraham O. Za- 
briskie, of Hudson. Mr. Gilchrist was unable to serve, and 
William Brinkerhoff, a well-known Jersey City lawyer, was sub- 
stituted for him. Mr. Zabribkie's other duties prevented him, 
too, from giving his time to the Commission, and A. S. Hubbel), 
of Essex, w£s named to succeed him. 

When the Commission as thus finally made up entered upon 
its work, it did not, of course, confine itself to the consideration 
of the particular reforms that had prompted its appointment. 
With an intuition that it would be worse than folly to spend 
time upon the question of Senate representation, it left that 
topic severely alone, but it made an excursion for defects through 
ail the rest of the State's Bill of Rights and applied remedies 
wherever it thought they were reeded. Among the other reforms 
proposed was one by Mr. Gregory for biennial legislative ses- 
sions, and another suggestion was that a two-thirds vote should 
be required to override the Governor's veto. Mr. Ten Eyck 
opposed the extension of the veto power of the Governor with 
the epigrammatic plea that the people did not care to make the 
Governor a part of the Legislature. Mr. Cutler warmly advo- 
cated the two-thirds vote rule, but the proposition was defeated 
by a tie vote. The school question — that part of it, at any rate, 
which related to the raising of taxes for the support of the 
schools — also came largely into the discussion. Under the 
existing Constitution the school moneys are raised by tax, based, 
of course, on valuations from the several counties in the State, 
and redistributed by the State among the counties on the basis 
of children. In its practical operation, the county that has 
more dollars than school children contributes to the maintenance 
of the schools in other counties that have more children than 
dollars. Mr. Cutler thought this system inequitable, and his 
insistment was that each county should get back its money in 
the redistribution on the basis on which it had paid it in — that 
is, the school tax having been raised in the several counties 
according to valuations, it should be re-apportioned among them 
on the basis of valuations. Mr. Grey urged the broader theory 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 99 

Ihat the schools are a State institution, and that, without regard 
to county lines, the State should gee that they are properly sus- 
tained. The Commission made no recommendation on this 
point. 

When the question of forbidding the donation of public 
moneys or lands to religious corporations was reached, there was 
no division in the Commission. Mr. Swajze's amendment that 
no public moneys should be paid to any religious, church or 
sectarian association met with a ready acquiescence. 

With the experience of the State in the ie alter of railroad 
monopolies and tax exemptions before his eyes, Mr. Brinkerhoff 
suggested an amendment authorizing the Legislature to take 
from persons or corpoiations any exclusive privileges they en- 
joyed. Mr. Gregory desired an amendment for the equalization 
of values among the counties once in four years, but that was 
defeated. An amendment that the penalty for the taking of a 
bribe by a member of the Legislature should be forfeiture of 
membership and prosecution for perjury was proposed and 
adopted, but the Senate of 1874 refused to submit it to the 
people. But overshadowing all these minor considerations was 
the question of general laws. With the experience of Jersey 
City to enlighten the judgment of the Commissioners, it was 
treated with unusual fullness, and a number of recommendations 
were made to the Legislature. The most important of these 
forbade the passage of private, local, or special laws regulating 
the internal aflFairs of towns or counties, or for the appointment 
of local officers or commissioners to regulate municipal aflPairs, 
and directed that the Legislature should pass general laws pro- 
viding for the cases enumerated, and for all other cases which, 
in its judgment, could be provided for by general laws. 

The Legislature that went to Trenton at the opening of the 
session of 1874 to consider these amendments was overwhelm- 
ingly Republican in both branches. The Senate, with fourteen 
Republicans and seven Democrats in it, re-elected John W. 
Taylor President and John F. Babcock Secretary. The thirty- 
three Republicans in the Assembly advanced Garret A. Hobart 
the florid-faced and smooth-tongued statesman from Passaic, to 



100 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the Speaker^s chair, over Andrew Jackson Smith, who had the- 
votes of the twenty- seven Democratic members. 

The Republican majority on joint ballot was thirteen, and 
there were some unusually able men on the floor of each 
chamber. John R. McPherson was still in the Senate from 
Hudson ; the courtly John Hopper was his colleague from 
Passaic, and Frederic A. Potts, a millionaire coal operator, of 
dignified bearing and handsome presence, was there from 
Somerset. Among the House members were Julius C. Fitz- 
gerald, of Essex, who made a notable reputation as a debater; 
the bright- faced and keen-witted Samuel Morrow, from the same 
county ; Alexander T. McGill, then a smiling young lawyer 
from Hudson and son of one of the oldest professors in Princeton 
College ; John D. Carscallen, who distinguished himself by his 
eloquent defense of the Jersey City commission government, 
and, like McGill, a Hudson man ; George O. Vanderbilt, of 
Mercer; the irrepressible Andrew Jackson Smith, of Mercer; 
droll George W. Patterson, "fresh from the battle-fields of 
Monmouth," and the soldierly and dignified Captain Wm. H. 
Gill, of Union. 

In his message Governor Parker spoke commendingly of the 
work of the Constitutional Commission, which he laid before 
the members for their consideration. 

"Seldom has a deliberative body convened," he wrote, "in 
which so little local prfjudice or partiean feeling existed, or in 
which greater patriotism, wisdom and discretion were displayed." 
And, of course, the amendments suggested by the Commission 
formed the chief topic of discussion in the two Houses. Senator 
Stone, of Union, a gentleman who had a very thick tongue, but 
enjoyed the reputation of being a lawyer of unusual capacity^ 
led a crusade against the Commission's suggestion that private 
property shall not be taken for public purposes without just 
compensation, and secured its defeat by a vote of seventeen to 
two. The Legislature, in fact, rejected a good many of the sug- 
gestions made^by the Commission. But those forbidding special 
legislation for cities and counties, requiring the regulation of 
their internal affairs by general laws, directing that property 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 101 

shall be assessed for taxes under general laws and by uniform 
rules according to its true value, and declaring that no donation 
of land or appropriation of money should be made by the State 
or any municipal corporation to or for the use of any society, 
association or corporation whatever — representing the essential 
work of the Commission — were accepted by the two Houses, 
4ind referred to the Legislature of 1875. 



I 



CHAPTER IX. 

It this Chapter seems to break the Costintity of the Is arrative 

COXCERNIKG THE ADOPTION OF THE GENERAL LaAV SySTEM, 

it l5 only to show how a new governor was 
Elected to Carry the Eeform Forward. 



^^■-^-^ 
; : ^ N the midst of these movements for the incorporation of 

W//^ the system of general laws into the State Constitution, 
^^Sw- Governor Parker's term expired, and preparations were 
made for the election of his successor. The ease with 
■which the Republicans had fewept the State in the fall of 1873 led 
them to the belief that they might win the Governorship in the 
fall of 1874 with a popular candidate, and George A. Halsey, of 
Newark, one of the strongest men in the party, was, by common 
consent, picked out a? their nominee. The convention met early^ 
August 27th, so as to give time for a thorough canvass of the 
State. Senator Potts called it to order, and J. Weyman Jones,. 
of Hudson, was Chairman. There was no aspirant in the field 
against Mr. Halsey, and his nomination was made by acclama- 
tion. Mr. Halsey was undoubtedly the most popular man of 
the party in the State at the time. He was at the head of the 
leather manufacturing industry, a man of large wealth, and of 
8uch fair instincts that the hundreds of hands in his service were 
ready to speak in his favor to the laboring voters in the State. 
He had been a Representative in Congress, and was at one time 
oifered the position of Register of the United States Treasury by 
General Grant. He was one of the chief men in the commis- 
sion named by Governor Randolph for the management of the 
insane asylum at Morris Plains, said to be the second finest 
asylum of its kind in the world. He enjoyed the confidence 
and respect of the people in the northern section of the State,, 
where he was best known, to an unusual degree, and was known 
(102) 



'-Ji? 




,^ 



George A. Halsey. 



104 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

to have no sympathy whatever with the iniquitous system of 
Legislative Commissions, under which the ring of Republican 
jobbers was robbing Jersey City. The sufFering^ of the people 
of that municipality had aroused the public concern and sym- 
pathy from one end of the State to the other. 0:her municipali- 
ties feared that the establishment of the same system over them 
might subject them to the same evils, and the people everywhere 
were consequently aroused to the perils of the situation. The 
countenance which the party as represented in several Legisla- 
tures had given to the system was felt to be a handicap to 
Republican success, and the leaders appreciated the necessity of 
offering to the people as its candidate for Governor a citizen 
whose high character and standing would be a guaiaatee of 
better methods. 

If opposition to Legislative Commissions was a necessary 
qualification in a Republican candidate, it was an even more im- 
portant desideratum in the selection of a Democratic candidate. 
The most marked stand the party had made on any question of 
public policy of late years was this which it had taken against 
the plan of ruling local governments by men named in Trenton ; 
and in the choice of the party's gubernatorial candidate, it was 
of first importance that he should be one whose record was most 
pronounced on that issue. As the presiding official of the Hud- 
son County Court of Oyer and Terminer, Judge Joseph D. 
Bedle had, since his defeat in the convention of 1872, made a 
notable record on the all-absorbing question. He had helped 
to bring to justice the servants — yes, the chiefs — of the ring 
that had seized control of the Jersey City government. His 
fervent charges to the grand jury had led to their indictment 
for fraud and conspiracy ; it was before him that they had been 
tried, and by him that they had been sentenced. His work on the 
Bench had been a burning protest against the continuance of the 
evil. Not only had he denounced the system ; he had actively 
pursued the men who benefited by it. An aroused sentiment 
therefore pointed out this rotund and cherub- faced Justice of the 
Supreme Court as the man of all men to bear the standard in 
the gubernatorial campaign, and to make all over the State the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 105 

struggle in behalf of home rule which he had so vigorously 
conducted in Hudson. And so when the Democratic State Con- 
vention met in Trenton three weeks after the Republicans had 
put Mr. Halsey forward, it was expected only to go through the 
perfunctory process of putting Judge Bedle ia formal nomina- 
tion, and there was a cut-and-dried aspect about the proceedings 
that really concealed an awful amount of party enthusiasm. 
Colonel William P. McMichael called the delegates to order, and 
Benjamin F. Carter, of Gloucester, whom the State Committee 
made temporary Chairman, gave way in the permanent organi- 
zition to Jacob Vanatta, a keen Morristown lawyer, whom 
Bedle, when he became Governor, made Attorney- General. On 
the roll-call of counties, every one except Camden, which cast 
three of its votes for General Haight, of Monmouth, and Bedle's 
own county of Hudson, two of whos3 votes were corralled by 
John T. Bird, of Hunterdon, declared for Bedle, and before the 
formal tally was begun Bedle was made the unanimous choice 
of the convention. A little incident of the convention that be- 
comes of interest because of the circumstances surrounding the 
subsequent nomination of General McClellan, was that when a 
delegate named McClellan was proposed by the Salem delegation 
as its member of one of the committees, the whole convention, 
mistaking the name for that of the famous hero of Antielam, 
rose to its feet and broke into the wildest demonstrations of 
enthusiasm. 

The fight at the polls was carried on by the Republicans on 
straight party lines, with little sly intimations, for the diversion 
of the Democratic vote, that Bedle represented in the fight only 
the Randolph aristocracy in the State House Ring, while the 
Democrats forced the issue of Legislative Commissions to the 
front, and made a gallant battle for local self-government. The 
majority of 13,233 by which Bedle carried the State, unprece- 
dented in all of the history of State politics, except in 1862, 
when Joel Parker carried it by 14,000 and over, was all the 
more notable because of Judge Bedle's refusal to resign his place 
on the Bench and of his consequent inability to lead the cam- 
paign in person. An incident of the campaign was the destruc- 



106 xMODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

tion of the Republican majority in the lower House and the 
election of an Assembly more than two-thirds Democratic — 
forty-one Democrats to nineteen Republicans — to open the new 
administration in 1875. The Republican hold-overs in the 
Senate enabled that party to retain control of that higher branch 
of the Legislature, however, and, so, to foil any attempts at 
administrative reform that the new Governor and the Demo- 
cratic Assembly might set on foot. 

At the opening of the Legislature of 1875, John W. Taylor,, 
of Essex, entered upon his third term as President of the Senate, 
and N. W. Voorhees, of Hunterdon, succeeded Babcock as Sec- 
retary. The Democratic caucus of the Assembly advanced 
George O. Vanderbilt, of Mercer, to the Speakership, and 
selected John Carpenter, Jr., of Hunterdon, as Clerk. The 
session gave promise, because of the importance of the business 
the two Houses had in hand, of being an unusually interesting 
one, and it was besides attended by excitements that cast no 
shadows before. Action for the second time on the proposed 
amendments to the Constitution, and the election of a United 
States Senator to succeed John P. Stockton, were two of the 
things everybody knew they had to do. 

One of the unanticipated excitements was the removal of Mr. 
Carpenter from his Clerkship, within a week after he had been 
inducted into the office, on charges of having entered into a dis- 
creditable deal concerning one of the subordinate places at his 
disposal. In order to secure votes for himself for the Clerkship 
he had promised the Journal Clerkship to two men, one Sayre 
and one Bamford. It was of course impossible for the two to 
have the one position, and a hat was brought and two ballots 
were put into it. The rivals drew from the hat on the under- 
standing that he who picked up the one with " No. 1 " marked 
on it was to have the coveted place and to recompense the other 
with his three- months' note for $500 with Mr. Carpenter's in- 
dorsement upon it. Bamford drew the lucky slip and handed 
the promised note over to Sayre. No one would ever have 
heard anything about the transaction if, after the drawing, Mr. 
Carpenter had put Bamford in the promised position. He was 




John P. Stockton. 



108 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

subjected, however, by the members who had given him his own 
place, to enormous pressure for the appointment of a third man, 
and he weakly yielded to it. 

Sayre had been shrew^d enough, immediately after he received 
the note, to sell it to an innocent third party and the disap- 
pointed aad angry Bamford, finding himself responsible for the 
debt and minus the ofl&ce which he supposed he had bought 
with it, began a suit against Carpenter for misrepresentation and 
fraud. The aifair became so notoriously public that the House 
could not close its eyes to the transaction, and a committee, con- 
sisting of Samuel Morrow, Alexander T. McGill, Charles D. 
Hendrickson, Henry Moffett and Henry B. Wilson, appointed 
to inquire into it, concluded that from first to last the transac- 
tion was " wholly disreputable," and deserving " unmistakable 
rebuke" more than mere censure. Captain Gill, supported 
by Assemblymen Carey and Edward F. McDonald, of Hudson, 
endeavored to induce the House to let Carpenter out of it 
with a censure; but Assemblyman Fitzgerald argued that 
nothing short of dismissal would meet the requirements and 
carried the House by. a vote of forty-three to seventeen with 
him. Austin Patterson, of Monmouth, who had been once 
Speaker of the House himself and whosa entertaining brother 
George was then a member, was appointed Carpenter's successor. 

In the first flush of discovery the transaction seemed to be a 
good deal blacker than it really was, but when the excitement 
had calmed down it was seen that Mr. Carpenter had planned on 
personal profit for himself by it and that he was only the unfor- 
tunate victim of a situation that he had not been tactful enough 
to avoid. His dismissal from the House service put him, of 
course, under a cloud for a time, but within a few years he had 
sufficiently recovered his prestige to be elected for two terms to 
represent the county of Hunterdon in the State Senate and sub- 
sequently to serve the Senate itself as its Secretary. 

There was much bitterness among the members over the selec- 
tion of a United States Senator, one of the functions the Legisla- 
ture was expected to discharge. The State House managers had 
warmly urged ex- Governor Randolph for the position, but that 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 109 

party of leaders ^y^s gradually growing to be unpopular among 
the masses. Randolph was obnoxious because be was believed 
to have been identified with the old Know-nothing party, and 
his election to the Governorship was said to have been largely 
promoted by what of that party remained Leon Abbett had 
grown into prominence as a figure in State politics. He had 
shown himself to be a man of much force of character and 
great combativeness, while he was everywhere recognized as an 
unusually magaetic siump talker, though he bad none of the 
graces of the polished orator — aggressive and brainy — in a word, 
he had come to be looked upon as a mai of exceptional power. 
Without seeming to make it his business to attack the State 
House magnates, he had sedulously intensified the impression that 
they represented a band of aristocrats who had no sympathy 
with the workingmen of the State ; but now, on the eve of the 
senatorial contest, he was outspoken in demanding the high 
office for a man more in sympathy with the people. Senator 
McPherson joined hands with him in an tifort to secure the 
prize for Robert Gilchrist, the Attorney- General of the State, 
and one of the most dramatic and effective pleaders at the bar. 
Senator Stockton, the incumbent, though he represented a family 
of historical lineage and should have easily captured the more 
aristocratic element in the caucus, was rudely pushed aside by 
both factions, and the struggle for the favor of the caucus lay 
between Randolph and Gilchrist. Mr. Gilchrist made an inter- 
esting and brilliant campaign among the members, but the State 
House autocrats, through their control of the party machinery 
everywhere, had succeeded in filling the legislative seats with 
men whom they could count on, and on the second ballot the 
caucus named Randolph as the party candidate for the shining 
honor. But forty- seven of the forty- nine Democratic members 
of the two' Houses seem to have been present at the caucus. Of 
those, twenty-eight voted for Randolph, fourteen for Gilchrist, 
five for Stockton. Randolph had an easy majority, and, of 
course, all the competing candidates stood out of his way. In 
the Joint Convention, held two days later, it fell to Abbett's lot 
to make formal presentation of Mr. Randolph's name, and 



110 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Senator Sewell, on behalf of the Republican minority, presented 
ex- Secretary George M. Robeson's name. The Democrats hav- 
ing a majority, Mr. Randolph was, of course, elected. Governor 
Bedle, as a part of the Randolph regime, afterward punished 
Gilchrist for his contumacy in going into caucus as the rival of 
the ex- Governor, by deposing him from the Attorney- General- 
ship, and appointed ex-Governor Joel Parker in his stead. 



CHAPTER X. 

Which Embraces the Story of the Catholic Protectory Bill, and 
Shows how One of the Most Ardent Religious Contro- 
versies OF Recent Years Led to the Popular 
Approval of the Constitutional 
Amendments. 




|l HESE were, however, only incidents of the history of 
that period. The thread of the narrative was caught 
up later in the session, when the duty of dealing with 
the Constitutional amendments prepared by the Com- 
mission and already approved by the Legislature of 1874 was 
entered upon. Governor Bedle had been elected on the Home- 
rule platform, and in his inaugural address he took occasion to 
give those of the amendments touching that subject a fresh 
indorsement. 

"It is plain," he said, "that in New York and New Jersey 
the system of legislative commissions has failed. The best 
municipal government is that where the people govern them- 
selves, and I hope to see the day when every city in the State 
shall be governed by a general law, guaranteeing to it local self- 
rule." 

The Governor's first veto, too, was of a bill to incorporate a 
little manufacturing company in Newark on the ground that it 
was special, and the sentiment against special laws and legisla- 
tive commissiocs was fed all through the session by the attempts 
to amend the most vicious and obnoxious features out of the 
Jersey City charter. Assemblyman McGill, then a smiling 
young Jersey City lawyer, representing one of the Hudson dis- 
tricts, offered the bill aimed at these reforms that attracted the 
most attention. It was opposed by his Hudson colleague, Cars- 
callen, and his Essex colleague, Mr. Kirk, and advocated by 

(111) 



112 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

George Patterson and Mr. Fitzgerald. Its progress through 
the House was so hotly contested at each step, however, that, 
like all the other measures of that trend, it failed of fruition. 

The pleadings by the Governor, and the ceaseless agitation of 
the Jersey City scandals, were not, however, without their effect. 
The Legislature took up the amendments which had been 
approved by the Legislature of 1874 and formally concurred in 
them. They had yet, before they could become a part of the 
organic law, to be submitted to a vote of the people, and the 
first Tuesday in the following September — the seventh — was 
designated by the lawmaking power for the taking of the vote. 

The special election had no sooner been ordered than the 
Legislature proceeded to make a record that called forceful 
attention to them. Among the amendments, as already stated,, 
was one providing that no doration of land or appropriation of 
money shall be made by the State or any municipal corporation 
to or for the use of any society, association or corporation 
whatever. 

The Catholic authorities of the Diocese feared that this amend- 
ment, with the other forbidding the passage of special laws, 
would prevent the carrying out of some enterprises that they 
were preparing to -go into with the aid of the State. One of 
these was the establishment of a reformatory for the special care 
of children of Catholic parentage. In order to secure the estab- 
lishment of such an institution before the prohibitive clauses 
could become operative, the Bishop had a bill providing for 
it prepared, and gave it to the big- bodied and big-hearted As- 
semblyman Doyle, of Essex, to introduce. It contemplated the 
maintenance of an institution, to be known as a Catholic Pro- 
tectory, out of the funds of the State ; established a prison, to 
which all the younger Catholic prisoners should be committed, 
and authorized the seizure by the police of idle, truant and de- 
linquent children of Catholic parents, and their commitment to 
its walls. The institution was to be entirely under the control 
of the Church, and the State was to have no connection with it 
at all — except to pay the expense of its maintenance. 

The mere introduction of the act might have been expected to 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 113 

arouse the people from one end of the State to the other, but for 
some inscrutable reason it lay unattacked in a committee of the 
House for weeks. Not till one of the New York newspapers 
explained its purpose were its opponents primed for a fight 
against it. Mr. Doyle, who introduced it, a big, jovial, rollick- 
ing fellow, made no secret of its purpose, and frankly admitted, 
when he was taxed about it, that it had been sent to him by the 
Bishop of the Diocese of Newark. Mr. Doyle found its most 
aggressive opponent in one of his own colleagues from Essex, 
William H. Kirk. Mr. Kirk was a stalwart fellow of heavy 
build, with dark, overhanging brow and keen black eyes, and 
suggestive, in his methods of speaking, of a Presbyterian Sun- 
day-school teacher. He had not been particularly conspicuous 
in the debates of the session till this act of his fellow-member 
aroused his combativeness. When the act was called up in the 
House on final passage. Kirk walked from his desk solemnly 
down the middle aisle and began an address that was printed in 
full in every newspaper in the State. He showed that the act 
was intended to establish by the authority and with the money 
of the State a penal institution that would be exclusively under 
secular control, and he urged that its passage would be the enter- 
ing wedge against the observance of the wholesome doctrine of 
the total separation of the Church from the State. 

"Not a Protestant in the land," he shouted, "would have the 
unblushing effrontery to propose such a bill," and then advanc- 
ing to the Clerk's desk he laid down the protest of the Newark 
Methodist Episcopal Conference against its passage. The stout- 
lunged McDonald, of Hudson, maintained that there was not a 
provision in the bill that had not been adopted in New York, 
Massachusetts and England ; that there were 300,000 Catholics 
in the State, and that they would not submit to having their 
children sent to an institution where the love for their religion 
was likely to be crushed out, and he insisted that the act did not 
call for a cent of aid from the State. Fitzgerald, of Essex, 
made a swelling speech about the separation of the Church and 
the State, and then wheeled around to the support of the act. 
T. S. Henry, of Essex, professed to be unable to see anything 



114 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

improper in the act, and the sleek Rabe, of Hudson, went to the 
aid of the act with the lawyer's plea that the incorporation of 
the Drew Theological Seminary was as much the State's recog- 
nition of a Church. Mr. Kirk met these criticisms with the 
observation that the wicked feature of the bill was that it 
allowed the State no voice in the management of the Protectory. 
In spite of Mr. Kirk's struggle against it the House passed it 
by a vote of thirty- six to twenty. The thirty-six affirmative 
votes which put it through were cast by Assemblymen Ander- 
son, Blancke, Bird, Bogert, Carrol ton, Carey, Conover (W. V.), 
Dodd, Doyle, Fitzgerald, F. French, Gill, Gordon, Hendrick- 
,«on, David Henry, T. S, Henry, Magee, McDonald, McDonnell, 
?McGill, Patterson, Pope, Rabe, Shann, Sheeran, Skellinger, 
.'Sutphen, Swayze, Swing, Van Cleef, Vanderbilt, Warrington, 
Wilson, Woodruff, Wyckoff and Zeluff. 

The negative votes were given by Messrs. Carpenter, Cars- 
callen, Conover, Edmunds, Goble, Halsey, Kirk, Lodge, Mor- 
row, Owen, Payne, Scovel, Taylor, Teed, Toffey, Torbett, 
Voorhees, Youmans and Youngblood. The Assemblymen who 
by their absence from the Chamber at the time the vote was 
taken, under suspicion of having dodged, were H. C. Herring, 
iR. N. Herring, Kinnard and Moffett. 

Assemblyman Kirk had not any idea what a great man he 
tad made of himself by his attack on the bill till he went back 
to his constituents in Newark. There he was received with the 
most effusive enthusiasm. The Order of Uiiittd Ameiican 
Mechanics arranged a demonstration in his favor, aud a great 
public meeting, attended by men of all parties, was the outcome. 
Resolutions indorsing his stand were adopted by all the councils 
of the order, and his fight against the bill was the theme of the 
ministers in half the pulpits in the State. 

When the act reached the Senate for concurrence, it was sent 
to one of the committees and so emasculated as to be scarcely 
recognizable. When it made its appearance on the Senate calen- 
dar again, on a report from the committee, it was accompanied 
by a still more radical church measure that Senator Abbett, 
of Hudson, had started on its travels through the two Houses. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 115 

This act, known as the Liberty of Conscience bill, was aimed 
at the admission of priests to the State reformatories, pecal 
institutions and asylums. The Hudson Senator based his argu- 
ments for the passage of the act upon the broad constitutional 
provision protecting the citizen in his inestimable privilege of 
worshiping Almighty God in the manner most agreeable to the 
dictates of his conscience, and on the claim that some of the 
rites of the Catholic Church that might be allowable in the 
Slate institutions were not open to people of that faith who were 
inmates of them. He succeeded in forcing his bill to a vote 
before the Catholic Protectory bill was reached on the calendar, 
but it was overwhelmingly defeated. Besides himself, only 
Senators Cornish (Dem.), of Warren ; Dayton (Dem.), of Ber- 
gen ; Potts (Rep.), of Hunterdon, and Sewell (Rep.), of Cam- 
den, voted for it. 

The Catholic Protectory bill, in the comparatively harmless 
and inoffensive shape to which the committee had reduced it, 
was called up for final passage an hour later. It found a warm 
advocate in the courtly and elegant Senator Hopper, of Passaic, 
and a warmer opponent in President Taylor, the Essex Senator. 
When the roll was called there were but eight votes for it ; 
twelve were against it, and so it was lost. The ayes were 
Abbett, Blackwell, Cornish, Dayton, Hopper, Potts, Sewell and 
Smith — Potts and Sewell being Republicans. The twelve nays 
were spoken by Hendrickson, Hill, Hopkins, Jarrard, Learning, 
Madden, Newkirk, Schultze, Taylor, Thorne, Willetts and 
Wood, of whom Hendrickson and Madden were Democrats. 
General Sewell explained, when his name was called, that the 
bill, as amended in the Senate, was a mere title and a colorless 
charter for a benevolent institution of the Catholic Church that 
invested it with no State functions, and he could therefore see 
no objection to it. Senator Stone, of Union, who was absent 
when the vote was taken, rose in his seat the following day to 
announce that if he had been on hand he would have voted 
against Abbett's Liberty of Conscience bill but in favor of the 
Protectory bill. 

The attempt to pass these two bills aroused the State to the 



116 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

highest pitch of excitement. The spirit of the old Know- 
nothing movement became rampant again. A few days later, 
Robert S. Woodruff, an unusually popular man in Trenton, was 
defeated in his candidacy for Tax Receiver of the city on the 
unsupported assertion that his nomination had been arranged 
by the Catholics, and the circumstance that revealed the eflfect 
of this intimation against him upon his chances was the fact that 
Creveling, the Democratic candidate for Mayor of the city, and 
Shepherd, the Democratic candidate for City School Superin- 
tendent, were both elected in the same poll by as pronounced 
a majority as that by which he was defeated. In some of the 
towns of the State an attempt was even made to banish the 
Bible from the public schools, as a sort of act of reprisal ; and in 
Union Hill, a little German settlement just outside of Hoboken, 
such an attempt succeeded, though a Council of the O. U. A. M. 
marched into the Town Hall in a body to protest. 

The excitement measurably subsided as the day in September 
designated for the special vote on them by the people approached, 
and it looked as if the Constitutional amendments were to be 
allowed by the indifferent people to carry themselves. But the 
old-time antagonisms were stirred up afresh on the eve of the 
election by the appearance in a Catholic organ, known as " The 
Citizen," of an appeal to its readers to vote against all of the 
amendments. On the Sunday before the day fixed for the special 
election a circular also was read from the Bishop of the Diocese 
in all the Catholic churches, admonishing the faithful to defeat 
the anti-church amendments. To make assurance doubly sure, 
they were even solicited to vote against all proposed. For the 
use of those among the parishioners who were disposed to sus- 
tain the general law features of the amendments, ballots were 
distributed in the churches with amendments numbers one, two, 
eight and eleven crossed out. These amendments were those pro- 
hibiting the use of public moneys for sectarian purposes, guar- 
anteeing free schools forever and forbidding special legislation. 

The effect of the announcement of these movements on the 
people was electrical. A call to arms was sounded from Sussex 
to Cape May, and as if moved by a single impulse the masses 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 117 

sprang to the rescue of the imperiled amendments. The 
Catholic contingent turned out in goodly numbers, and there 
was more excitement at the election booths than one is accus- 
tomed to see even in Presidential years. The vote was unusu- 
ally large, and the count of the ballots showed that the entire 
batch of amendments had been popularly approved by a majority 
of over 40,000. The excitements were reflected in the elections 
of members for the Legislature two months later. A large num- 
ber of the Democratic Assemblymen who had voted for the Pro- 
tectory bill prudently refused to stand for re-election. Doyle, 
its father, trusted to the normal Democratic majority of 1,100 in 
his district protecting him from defeat, and learned how sadly 
he had miscalculated when he found himself snowed under by 
an enormous adverse majority of 2,000. Assemblymen Rabe, 
of Hudson, and David Dodd, of Essex, were the only Demo- 
crats who had voted for the bill and secured re-election. Assem- 
blyman Kirk was rewarded for his battle against it by a hand- 
some promotion to the Senate, and the Democrats again lost 
control of the Assembly. 

The amendments thus handsomely adopted became, of course, 
part of the State's Bill of Rights at once, and the Legislators 
who went into office immediately after their acceptance (in 
1876) found themselves hampered, in their effi)rts to please their 
local constituencies, by the new inhibition against the passage of 
special laws and the requirement for general laws. There was 
a marked contrariety of view among the lawyers and public 
men as to the exact interpretation to be put upon these particu- 
lar amendments, and Governor Bedle, in his first annual message 
to the Legislature of 1876, undertook to throw some light upon 
the mooted question. He was of the opinion that the require- 
ment for general laws as to cities was not so broad as that for 
towns and counties, and that the only restraint against the enact- 
ment of such laws for cities was contained in the other new 
olause forbidding the naming of a city's local rulers by the 
Legislature. He urged the centennial Legislature to proceed 
with its work on that line. 

" The facility with which designing men have obtained special 



118 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

laws to enable them to prosecute various schemes of extravagance 
and fraud under the guise of public improvement and benefit 
has been the source of much of our municipal burden," he 
wrote. " Now is the opportunity, though late, to strike a blow 
for the protection of our property in municipalities by sweeping 
away the devices under the forms of law under which these 
abuses have been perpetrated, and substituting plain, just and 
general laws, alike applicable to all cities." 

The Legislature of 1876 was not by any means large enough 
to meet the situation thus mapped out ; and, after floundering- 
about for weeks in a vain attempt to devise some form of general 
legislation that would meet special emergencies, the members 
began to flood the calendars, as usual, with bills of a special 
and local character, doubtful all the time of their constitu- 
tionality, but determined to pass them and leave it for the 
courts to say what they were good for. Poor, afflicted Jersey 
City, that expected to be the immediate beneficiary of the new 
constitutional system, found herself in fresh embarrassments. 
There was no other city in the State whose affairs were admin- 
istered by legislative commissioners, and any act intended to 
relieve her of hers was necessarily special and local and conse- 
quently repugnant to the new constitutional requirements. 
Senator Abbett, however, framed a bill wiping out the irrespon- 
sible officials who controlled her, and when it was taken into 
court for the constitutional test argued that as it put the 
city on the same basis of home rule with all the other cities in 
the State, it was, though special and local in its application, 
essentially general in its character. The court sustained him, 
and Jersey City reached the end of that period of misrule. 

The constitutional prohibition of special legislation continued 
to obstruct the passage of bills, even into Governor Ludlow's 
administration, and the problem of dealing with special local 
interests was surrounded by so many embarrassments that a 
revision of the Constitution seemed to be imperative and an 
act authorizing the appointment of a Commission to amend it 
again was passed. Governor Ludlow was of the conviction^ 
however, that proper effort would produce a line of the general 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 119 

laws demanded, and in the hope of forcing the Legislature to 
enact them, he declined for a time to name the Commissioners, 
Eventually he appointed Leon Abbett, H. N. Cougar and John 
T. Bird. Barker Gummere and Holmes W. Murphy were 
named by the House, and John J. Gardner and Thomas S. Mc- 
Kean by the Senate, to act with them. They never devised any 
amendments that were acceptable, however. 

The chief sufferers by the new constitutional system were the 
members of the lobby who had grown rich in securing special 
legislation for their clients, and the gangs of official looters wha 
had found it possible to override every obstruction that the law 
offered to the carrying out of their programmes by a little 
special act. They both put up with the new order of things 
with ill-disguised impatience for several years, but found them- 
selves so often foiled in the pursuit of their game by the require- 
ment of general laws which hit a good many other communities 
than the one at which they wanted to aim, that they became 
clamorous, finally, for the elimination of the obstructive amend- 
ments from the Constitution again, and for the re-opening of 
the flood-gates of special legislation. The Legislatures of 1889 
and 1890 yielded to the pressure and directed the submission of 
the question to the people. The movement placed the amend-, 
ments in jeopardy. It was feared that the active work of self- 
seeking cormorants might produce a favorable vote which an in- 
different and apathetic public might not take the trouble to 
offset; but when the day in 1890 for the taking of the 
special vote arrived, the people showed themselves more alert 
than they had been expected to be, and the proposition that the 
amendments should be taken out of the Constitution again was 
negatived by a handsome majority, and these salutary prohibitory 
features of the instrument are still a part of it. 

Rev. Father Corrigan, an independent Catholic priest of Hobo- 
ken, subsequently attempted to evade the force of the consti- 
tutional prohibition against sectarian appropriations with an act 
bringing the Catholic parochial schools measurably under the 
wing of the State. There had. been exciting discussions between 
this controversial rector and Bishop A. M. Wigger, the head of 



120 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the Diocese in which his church is located, over an educational 
freak with religious leanings known as " Cahensleyism." Rev. 
Father Corrigan was of Irish descent, but full of the American 
spirit ; Bishop Wigger was of German lineage, and Father 
Corrigan openly accused him of still being wedded to the tradi- 
tions of the land of his birth — of being out of sympathy with 
American institutions and especially with the American system 
of public education. Their differences culminated in a discus- 
sion concerning the relations of the Church to the schools, of the 
races to the Church, and of all three — Church, races and 
schools — towards the Commonwealth. The outcome of the 
agitation was the preparation by the Hoboken rector of an act 
embodying his idea of the way in which the State could, in spite 
of the constitutional prohibition, be brought to the aid of the 
parish schools. 

At that time all the public schools in the large cities were 
overcrowded, children being turned away from the doors every 
day in the week. Father Corrigan seized upon the circumstance 
as a means of popularizing his plan for the joint conduct of the 
schools by the Catholic Church and the State. 

His bill proposed to throw the parish school buildings open 
to State use just as though they were public school buildings, 
and the ordinary routine of public school work was to be pur- 
sued in them till the afternoon ; then the priests and the Sisters 
were to be allowed to go in among the pupils to give them an 
hour or two of religious instruction. 

The idea did not meet with the approval of the higher 
authorities of the Church, but Father Corrigan determined to 
press it in spite of them. A little handful of priests from other 
sections of the State who had rather sided with him in his 
differences with Bishop Wigger accompanied him to Trenton one 
Monday evening during the session of 1893, and were given the 
freedom of one of the reception-rooms of the Executive Chamber. 
The air of the monastery sombered the brilliantly-lighted apart- 
ment, as around the table sat the little assemblage of priests, 
with clean-shaven faces and habits of severe black covering their 
well- nourished forms from their ears to their heels, awaiting the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 121 

devotees of the Church who had been summoned from their 
seats in the Senate and Assembly to be importuned to present 
the act for the consideration of the Legislature. The prim, tall 
form of the young Essex Senator, Michael T. Barrett, was the 
first to enter the august presence. To their surprise and con- 
sternation he argued against it, and when pressed against his 
judgment was constrained to refuse point-blank to have anything 
to do with the movement. Senator William D. Daly, of Hud- 
son, was next called. Though not a Catholic, he stood for a 
large Catholic constituency. He declared his unwillingness in 
no less emphatic terms. And then young Thomas J. O'Brien, 
of Morris, looking for all the world like a priest himself, bowed 
himself respectfully out. 

The proposition had a political as well as a Church aspect. 
There had been signs of a renewal of the proscriptive Know- 
nothingism of the past ; and the throngs in the lighted corridors 
had begun to discuss the possible effect of the movement upon 
Deftiocratic prospects, when a portly gentleman moved among 
them towards the conference-room. His hair was tinged with 
gray, but his ruddy face and bright brown eyes were very young. 
Like those whom he was seeking, his face was clean-shaven, and 
he wore a suit of black. Everyone greeted him as Senator, 
bowed deferentially as he went by, and stepped back to allow 
him to pass, and when the door of the room closed on him, the 
whisper went around the corridor that Senator Smith would put 
his foot on the project as no other man in the State could. The 
handsome Newark leader, then on the eve of being chosen to 
be McPherson's colleague in the United States Senate, was a 
Catholic himself, in touch with the higher authorities of the 
Church. For an hour he was closeted with the priests. He 
argued against the measure from every standpoint, and because 
of his influence in Church circles, hoped to dissuade its pro- 
moters. The only effect of his protests was to dash their hope 
of eventual success, but they persisted in their calls for members 
till the most reckless of all of them had been called to their 
hearing. Everybody knew him as " Mike " Coyle. Repre- 
senting a Hoboken district so deep-dyed in its Democracy as to 



122 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

pardon any freak its representative might be tempted to indulge 
in, he finally consented to take the bill and have it placed upon 
the Assembly calendar for passage. 

The moment it made its appearance, it was smuggled into a 
committee-room and kept there, secluded from the public view,, 
till the Legislature broke up and went home. 



CHAPTER XI. 

Which is the Story of Mr. McPherson's Successful Battle Against 
■ the State House Magnates and op the Excitements 
Attending his First Election to the United 

States Senate. 




Yvr'^^ ARE not to be betrayed into the idea that this dis- 
^& cursive narrative of the efforts, first to overthrow, and 
afterwards to evade the force of the constitutional 
amendments, brings us to the end of our story. We 
have, indeed, thus far, closely followed the history of the Com- 
monwealth only up to the close of the Legislature of 1876. 
The fall of that year found the nation plunged into one of the 
most exciting of presidential struggles, and the State absorbed 
in its legislative elections, because there was a United States 
Senatorship at stake. Randolph had succeeded Stockton in 
1875. The stately Frederick T. Frelinghuysen was to sur- 
render the other seat in the Senate in March, 1877, and to the 
Legislature to be chosen in the fall of 1876 would fall the nam- 
ing of his successor. The chances were with the Democrats in 
the legislative contests, because the State seldom failed to assert 
her Democracy in presidential campaigns. She had given her 
vote to Pierce in 1852, to Buchanan in 1856, to McClellan in 
1864, to Seymour in 1 868. Only the multiplicity of Democratic 
candidates had enabled four Lincoln electors to carry the poll 
in 1860. Her failure to support Greeley in 1872 was due to the 
fact that he had once been a Republican, and was but the expres- 
sion, after all, of the intensity of her Democratic sentiment ; and 
when her voters went to the polls in the fall of 1876 to bestow 
her seven votes in the Electoral College, they tarried long enough 
to cast their votes for Democratic candidates for State Senator 

and Assembly. 

(123) 



124 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

But the local victory was less marked than had been the ex- 
pression of preference as between the national candidates. 
Tilden's majority over Hayes was between 12,000 and 13,000. 
The Democrats captured the Senate by a single majority. The 
Assembly, that on the basis of the presidential vote should have 
had a working Democratic majority, had been reduced by the 
Republican Redistricting Act to a tie. With so narrow a 
majority in their favor, the time would seem inopportune for a 
factional rivalry between the Democrats over the United States 
Senatorship, but the controversy goes into history as involving 
the first serious and determined challenge of the supremacy of 
the State House managers. Leon Abbett and John R. Mc- 
Pherson, who had engaged in a sort of preliminary skirmish 
with them in the senatorial contest of 1875, now threw down 
the glove to them in solid earnest. 

That McPherson and Abbett were preparing for just such a 
struggle as that which they had now determined to make has been 
apparent from what has been said of them in previous chapters. 
In their legislative careers both had devoted themselves to the 
cause of the working masses. They now openly charged that 
the Democratic leaders at the State House were aristocrats, 
devoted to the worship of the money power, and out of sympa- 
thy with the mas3e8 of the party who were obliged to depend 
upon their every-day work for their every-day bread and butter. 
Neither had let pass unimproved any opportunity that the pro- 
gress of legislation afforded to let the masses know that he 
was endeavoring to secure for them that recognition in party 
councils which the prouder and richer leaders of the party had 
not though it worth the while to accord to them. Abbett was 
especially fertile in creating situations that placed the exclusive 
system of party rule that the leaders at the State House enforced 
in the most striking contrast with the more popular system 
which he and McPherson wanted to establish. Mr. McPherson 
posed less than Abbett, but he proved an effective ally because 
of his skill and tact as a managing politician. 

Both were favored sons of Hudson. Abbett had come from 
Philadelphia, located in Hoboken, represented one of the dis- 




John R. McPherson. 



126 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

tricts there in the Assembly, moved to Jersey City, been sent 
from there to the Assembly again, and risen to the Speakership. 

Mr. McPherson had spent the larger part of his life in busi- 
ness in Hudson City, as that part of the Heights immediately 
west of old Jersey City was known before its consolidation with 
the old town. He had been successful and grown rich. There 
was scarcely a business enterprise of any kind set on foot there 
without his active participation. He had dabbled in politics 
from his early manhood, and had been the ruling factor for 
years in the Hudson City Council. Old George P. Howell, a 
brother-in-law of the late General Grant, who was his Repub- 
lican opponent when he first sought a seat in that body, stood at 
the polls all day on election day, and asked even his own party 
friends to vote for McPherson. McPherson's path to the seat 
was, therefore, an easy one, and once there he proved himself to 
be so valuable a public servant that no attempt was ever after- 
wards made to dislodge him. After the consolidation of Hud- 
son City with Jersey City he set his eye upon a seat in the State 
Senate, and found, when he sought it, that Leon Abbett had 
entered the lists in advance of him. There was a rivalry — a not 
unfriendly one — between the two for the support of the Demo- 
cratic leaders of the county, and as the hour for the holding of 
the county convention approached they saw that they had about 
evenly divided the local Democratic strength between them. 
If each had pursued his canvass to the end on lines of bitter- 
ness and either had triumphed over the other, the resulting 
auim >i^itits might have divided the Damocratic party against 
itself, and given the county a Republican representative in the 
upper branch of the Legislature. To escape that they concluded 
that it was wiser to concede to one another, and finally an 
arrangement was made by which a board of arbitrators, that 
both were to choose, should determine who of them should retire, 
in the interest of harmony, from the contest. The board tied as 
between them, but one of Abbett's supporters gave way to 
McPherson, and Mr. Abbett stepped aside to allow Mr. Mc- 
Pherson to take a nomination without further opposition. 

That was the beginning of an alliance between these two 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 127 

powerful leaders that has its sequel in all the subsequent history 
of the State traversed in the pages of this book. It was an 
alliance of two men who had come up from the humblest 
beginnings to fight the moneyed aristocracy that ruled the party 
with a rod of iron from the State House at Trenton. Inci- 
dentally some of the work of both has been sketched in previous 
chapters. The rest of these pages is devoted largely to telling 
the story of the rest of their careers. They had made their 
first diversion against the State House autocracy when, at the 
time of the election of Theodore Randolph to the United States 
Senate, in 1875, they supported the candidacy of his rival, 
Robert Gilchrist. Ex-Governor Randolph achieved the office 
in spite of them, but the fight made for Gilchrist was of such a 
character as to convince the State House leaders that they had 
no mean antagonists in the two opposition leaders who put Mr. 
Gilchrist in the field. 

There were whispers, as the campaign that produced the 
Legislature of 1877 progressed, that Mr. McPherson had him- 
self become ambitious for the United States Senatorship, and 
that if the majority on joint ballot were Democratic he expected 
to succeed Frederick T. Frelinghuysen. Mr. McPherson had 
recently invented a system for the safe and comfortable trans- 
portation of cattle from the far West to the great abattoirs of 
the East that the railroads were ready to use and that promised 
an enormous fortune to him. It was while working at Wash- 
ington to influence a little favoring national legislation to make 
the assurance of the fortune doubly sure, that he became in- 
spired with the ambition to sit in the Senate. 

The year 1876, when the contest between the parties for the 
control of the Legislature that was to elect the new Senator took 
place, was even more notable in national history than in the 
State. It was the Centennial year ; it was also the year when 
the historical rivalry between Tilden and Hayes for the Presi- 
dency occurred. Nowhere in the country did the party antag- 
onisms which that rivalry aroused manifest themselves more 
violently than in New Jersey. Having carried the State, and, as 
they believed, the nation, for Tilden, there was a prevailing feel- 



128 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



ing among the Democrats of the Commonwealth that the 
party might rather fight, for its rights than see the Presidency 
stolen from them. The situation was so serious that a num- 
ber of leading Jerseymen held a meeting in New York to 
prepare for it, at which a committee, consisting of Robert 

Gilchrist, Ashbel Green, 
Gershom Mott, Wm. W. 
Shippen, John P. Stock- 
ton, Jacob Vanatta and 
Garret D. W. Vroom, 
to consider the political 
situation and determine 
what the public duty of 
New Jersey might be in 
the expected crisis was 
appointed. The move- 
ment seems to have been 
scarcely more than an in- 
dication of the super- 
heated condition of the 
public mind — for when, 
at the end of the tactical 
campaign between the 
adherents of the two 
presidential candidates in 
Congress, Rutherford B. Hayes was declared by an extfa-Consti- 
tutional Commission to have been elected. New Jersey, with the 
rest of the nation, accepted the situation with nothing more 
violent than a protest. 

Several of her statesmen had in fact done their part in fashion- 
ing the result. Frederick T. Frelinghuysen was, as already 
stated, her representative in the Senate of the nation. His was 
one of the eight votes cast, on the day before he stepped out of 
his high position, in the Commission of fifteen in support of 
Hayes' title. Joseph P. Bradley, who had been a railroad 
lawyer in Newark, and risen to a position on the Bench of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, cast a second of the eight 




Garret D. W. Vroora. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 129 



votes. Ashbel Green was of those who pleaded Tilden's cause 
before the Commission, and Cortlandt Parker, a stately lawyer 
of Newark, had been one of the visiting statesmen who assisted 
to arrange matters in Louisiana in Hayes' interest. 

When the Legislature came to Trenton early in January to 
elect a successor to Mr. Frelinghuysen, the perilously close 
Democratic majority dovetailed with the presidential complica- 
tions to make the issue of the senatorial struggle a doubtful 
one. With eleven Democrats and ten Republicans in the Senate 
and the Assembly thirty on each side— with, therefore, but a 
single vote standing between them and success— the Repub- 
licans were not without hope that by complicating the situa- 
tion they might succeed in renewing Mr. Frelinghuysen's term 
at Washington. Mr. Frelinghuysen had not yet made his 
famous speech in the Senate concerning the method of conduct- 
ing the electoral count, nor had he as a member of the Electoral 
Commission assisted by his vote to carry out the Hayes pro- 
gramme ; and the hope that the respectful consideration of his 
name as a senatorial possibility again might influence him to 
liberality in dealing with the electoral complications persuaded 
even some Democrats to lend a favorable ear to his candidacy. 
Tiiden's influence might take from the Democratic majority the 
one vote needed to send him back to the Senate. Mr. Freling- 
huysen might in return be induced to aid Mr. Tilden in bring- 
ing about a favorable conclusion of the electoral controversy. 

Then there were other local influences at work in his behalf 
quite as effectively. One of the forty-one Democrats was a 
German brewer from Newark, named Gottfried Krueger. He 
had recently established his malt-houses and had involved him- 
self in expenditures he found it hard to bear. The money paid 
by him into the hands of the United States Revenue Collector 
for beer stamps during the course of a year was an enormous 
item for him. Ex- Congressman George A. Halsey was the 
recognized medium through whom the presidential favors in 
New Jersey were distributed. His word, of course, went a long 
distance with the federal official, and it was feared that he might 
convince Krueger that he could make things easier for him at 

9 



130 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the revenue office if he would but consent to assist the Repub- 
licans on the joint ballot. The Democrats felt constrained 
to keep Krueger under espionage from the very moment he 
reached Trenton, and all their movements indicated that they 
were afraid that he was preparing to ally himself with the Re- 
publicans and assist in defeating the election of a Democratic 
Senator. 

Factional bitterness in the Democratic camp increased the 
<;hance of these defections. Mr. McPherson proved to be an 
aggressive candidate for the favor of the Democratic joint caucus. 
The moment he made his ambition known the State House 
autocrats summoned all the powers of the State in opposition to 
him. They believed in opposing him with Ashbel Green that 
the closeness of their relations would bring Samuel J. Tilden 
actively to Judge Green's support. Governor Bedle was accused 
of helping them by placing the State patronage at the disposal 
of those Senators and Assemblymen who would agree to vote 
against McPherson for Green, and a party of Hudson men 
favorable to McPherson's candidacy even waited upon him and 
protested that he had no right to do it. 

Feverish excitement marked the opening of the Legislature 
because of the complications on both sides. McPherson was 
determined at whatever cost to humble the State House autoc- 
racy. The State House autocracy felt that it was making a fight 
for life or death ; and with the majority of but one against them, 
the Republicans hoped to bring a man of their own choice 
through the scrimmage. All sides played carefully for posi- 
tion, and no movement was taken rashly or precipitately. The 
eleven Democrats in the Senate found it easy to organize 
promptly, with Leon Abbett as President, and Charles Jamison, 
of Somerset, as Secretary. But the two sides fought for the 
vantage in the evenly-divided Assembly. The members of that 
chamber should have organized at the same hour at which Mr. 
Abbett was made President of the Senate, but when John Y. 
Foster, by virtue of his position as Clerk of the preceding 
Assembly, called the roll, only the thirty Republicans answered ; 
the thirty Democrats had evidently stayed away by pre-arrange- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



131 



ment. Nothing was possible except a motion to adjourn till the 
next day, and John W. Griggs, then a rising young Paterson 
lawyer, made it. On the following day every seat was filled, 
and an attempt was made to elect a Speaker. The Democrats 
nominated Rudolph F. Rabe, a sleek and plausible Assembly- 
man from Hudson ; the Republicans presented the name of 
A Id en C. Scovel, of 
Camden. The roll- 
call on three or four 
ballots showed thirty 
votes for each and con- 
sequently no election. 
The deadlock con- 
tinued for a day or 
two later. It was 
broken before the end 
of the week by a divi- 
sion of the officers be- 
tween the two parties. 
One morning, just 
after Mr. Foster had 
completed the roll-call, 
Assemblyman Howell, 
of Essex, arose in his 
seat and surprised his 
fellow- Republicans 

with a resolution designating all the officers of the House from 
Speaker down to Doorkeeper. It gave the Speakership to Rabe 
and the Clerkship to Foster. Having thus divided the chief 
places between the two parties, the resolution showed a similar 
division of the minor positions. Assemblyman Griggs entered 
a sharp protest against that method of election and raised the 
point of order that each officer should be separately chosen. 
Mr. Foster ruled the point not well taken and put the resolution 
before the chamber. Howell and Van Rensselaer, of Essex; 
Vail, of Union, and Rue, of Mercer, Republicans, joined with 




Rudolph F. Rabe. 



132 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the thirty Democrats and put it through, and the Assembly was 
ready to proceed with business. 

The decks were thus cleared for the senatorial battle, with 
the Democrats in the advantage. Both Houses were controlled 
by men of their party, and preparations were made for the 
caucuses. The Republican forty met in one of the rooms of 
the Trenton House, and with one voice agreed to support Fre- 
linghuysen for re-election. The Democratic forty-one were to 
have met the same evening in the Assembly Chamber to select 
their candidate, but Mr. McPherson hadn't his fences all up yet,^ 
and President Abbett gave him time to do the needed work by 
peremptorily adjourning the Senate, and ending the Legislative 
week before the State House coterie could call a caucus. When 
the members re-assembled for the week's session on the following 
Monday McPherson had arranged everything to his satisfaction, 
and the call for the nominating conference went out. The war 
between the Hudson candidate and the State House autocrats 
waged fast and furious behind locked doors, and the partisans 
of the two sides narrowly escaped blows while the discussion 
was on. When the ballot was taken, however, it was seen that 
Mr. McPherson had a decided majority, and he was declared ta 
be the nominee of .the Democratic party against Mr. Freling- 
huysen. 

His victory in caucus was, however, only the first step 
towards securing the distinction. The joint meeting at which 
the action of the caucus was to be ratified was yet two days 
away, and the most difficult part of his canvass lay in keeping 
his men together until the hour for his election arrived. The 
nominaiion had no sooner been made than the Republicans began 
to dicker with the weaker brethren in the Democratic camp. 
Their hold, through Mr. Halsey, on Krueger was evidently a 
strong one. The Democratic caucus kept him carefully under 
eye, and from the time the nomination was made to the time 
when the joint meeting was held every movement of his was 
reported to the caucus — whom he met and where he went, what 
he ate and where he slept — the caucus knew it all. Other 
members were put under the same kind of espionage. Alexander 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 133 

W. Harrip, a Southern adventurer, who had managed to get 
into oce of the Hudson seats; EHas J. Mackay, representing 
one of the Wairen districts, and Thomas J. Hannou, a butter 
dealer in Jersey City, were all unconsciously placed under the 
eye of detectives. 

Mr. Frelinghuysen had meanwhile disappointed the Demo- 
cratic hope that he might pursue a conservative course in the 
electoral controversy ; and by a speech in the Senate upholding 
the proposed Republican method of count he had aroustd such 
sharp criticism among the Democrats that his Republican 
backers felt that it would be worse than useless to attempt to 
break the Democratic caucus in his interest. There were rumors 
that if the Republicans would drop Frelinghuysen, William 
Walter Phelps, a brilliant Bergen county Congressman, might 
be able to persuade Harris and Mackay to join them in electing 
him. The Republican managers exploited that rumor and dis- 
covered that there was not sufficient foundation for it to justify 
them in making it the basis of action. 

The day before joint meeting, however, ex-Secretary George 
M. Robeson appeared in Trenton and announced with a great 
flourish of trumpets that if he were taken up by the Republicans 
he could get the needed Democratic vote. Mr. Robeson had 
been Attorney-General of the State, and won a national notoriety 
as General Grant's Naval Secretary. The two years that had 
passed since he had stepped down from his high position in 
Washington had been spent in Camden in legal practice. Just 
before he obtruded himself into this senatorial controversy he 
bad escaped contemnation at the hands of the Democratic 
House of Representatives by the vote in committee of A. A. 
Hardenbergh, an amiable Democrat who represented the Hudson 
county district in the House of Representatives. The moment 
Mr. Robeson reached Trenton, it became noised around that 
^60,000 were at the disposal of any Democrat who would join 
the Republicans in making a Senator of him. Before nightfall 
it was positively asserted that a Democrat had been secured, and 
the Republicans assured themselves that the deal was so likely 



134 MODERN BATTLES OF THENTON. 



to be carried out that they re assembled in caucus, and, dropping 
Frelinghuysen, formally made Robeson their candidate. 

Trenton has seldom seen a night of such excitement. Mr. 
McPherson's managers were convinced that the Republican 
caucus would not have changed from Frelinghuysen to Robeson 
unless the change was to be consummated in joint meeting at 
noon on the following day, and every man in their caucus was 
put under the most careful scrutiny. By midnight it had been 
currently reported that Hannon was the weak brother. 

Hannon stood in the Assembly as the representative of the 
famous Democratic Horseshoe District. When he sought the 
nomination he had been opposed by Terrence J. McDonald. 
The vote between them stood eleven each in convention, and an 
appeal to the County Committee was needed to break the dead- 
lock. The committee made Hannon the nominee, but '^ Terry," 
as McDonald was familiarly known, announced himself as the 
regular candidate, and because he was better known than Hannon, 
Hannon came to be looked upon as the independent nominee. 
Hannon was elected, and after he had reached Trenton he seems, 
for purposes of his own, to have encouraged the idea that he was 
not to be numbered with the regular Democrats. When he thus 
held himself up as not of the fold, it was a temptation to the 
Republican plotters to deal with him, and it was not long before 
they were in communication with him. A few weeks after elec- 
tion he was called upon by Frank Champney, the son of the 
Republican Chief of Police of Jersey City, who reminded him 
that he held the decisive vote between the two parties in the 
senatorial contest and pictured to him the golden opportunities 
that lay before him. The result was that Hannon was persuaded 
to go to the Cosmopolitan Hotel on the following Sunday to 
meet an unnamed tempter. There he met a man named Gregory, 
who had held some official position under Robeson and after- 
wards made an unsuccessful Assembly contest in one of the 
Jersey City districts, and this man introduced him to a fine- 
looking fellow, whose name has not been divulged. The 
stranger talked to him about Robeson and $10,000, and a day 
or two later he went sleighiiding with this individual, and was 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 135 



gratified to hear that the price had been advanced to $25,000. 
There had been two or three conferences, when Hannon, becom- 
ing frightened, sought Senator Abbett, at Martin M. Drohan's 
house in Jersey City, and laid the matter before him. Both Mr. 
Abbett and Mr. Drohan advised Hannon to continue the 
negotiations to the end. 

Thus things stood on the morning of joint meeting. Twelve 
o'clock was the hour for the assembling of the two Houses in 
joint convention. The Democrats were under high tension, and 
alarm was on every face when it was seen that some of the 
members were out of their seats. The big brewer from Newark, 
whose antics had excited so much apprehension, was among his 
Essex colleagues, and Harris' long, red beard was descried 
among the Hudson members. Even Hannon was in his place,, 
but little Mackay, of Warren, was absent. Mr. Abbett, who 
by virtue of his Senate Presidency presided over the two 
Houses, ordered the doors locked, and with a voice of iron com- 
manded the Sergeant-at-Arms to bring Mr. Mackay in. The 
hunt for him was not long. He was found loitering around a 
statue of General Phil Kearny, which now ornaments one end 
of Military Park in Newark but stood then neglected and dust- 
covered in one of the corridors of the State House, and marched 
to his seat in the chamber. 

All the members being now in their places, the motion that the 
joint meeting proceed to the election of United States Senator 
was made by Speaker Rabe. Instantly a dozen members flocked 
to the floor to Hannon's seat, and politicians, leaders and workers 
of both parties, chased to his side from the lobbies. No man 
was ever so thoroughly under guard. The Democrats lowered 
at him suspiciously, and he knew from their glare that serious 
violence would pay for his desertion of his party. The Repub- 
licans were there to keep him in countenance while he cast hi© 
expected vote for them. "Duke" Tilden, a fat and good- 
natured Republican Assemblyman who sat next to him, leaned 
over to whisper to him. 

"I hear," he said, "that a Democratic vote has been got for 
Robeson, and that it is going to be cast by the man who sits next 
to me." 



136 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

" Wait till you see," Haonon responded with a lip trembling 
with excitement. 

Meanwhile, the two caucus candidates had been put before 
the body — Robeson for the Republicans, McPherson for the 
Democrats — and every man tallied the announcements as the 
roll-call proceeded, with nervous fingers. A pin could have been 
heard to fall when Hannon's name was called. As he responded 
with McPherson's name a great cheer rent the air and his Demo- 
cratic guard flocked to the seat of Harris, whose name was next 
on the roll. He, too, said " McPherson," and the excited throng 
dashed over the chamber and clustered around Krueger's seat 
menacingly till he had said "McPherson," and then to Mackay's 
bench till he had said " McPherson." All the doubtful votes 
had now been tallied up, and the Democrats burst into an 
applause that was deafening. The cast-up of the total showed 
that Mr. McPherson's army had been held firmly to his stand- 
ard and that the scheme of Robeson's friends had been defeated. 

The vote, as it was first taken, showed forty- one Democrats 
for McPherson and forty Republicans for Robeson. Before it 
had been announced, however, the disappointed Republicans 
broke ranks and fled from their candidate. Senators Hobart 
and Kirk and Assemblymen Brigham, Griggs, Cavileer, Voor- 
hees, Cory, Payne, Van Duyne and Hill sprang to Freling- 
huysen ; Senators Magie and Schultze and Assemblymen Pier- 
son, Vail, Traphagen, Tilden, Van Rensselaer, Leonard, Howell, 
Wightman, Burroughs, Taylor, Van Hise, Drake, Nichols, 
Schultze, Pancoast and Cooper changed to Cortlandt Parker, 
and Assemblyman Cunningham to Phelps. On the announce- 
ment, eighteen were for Parker, ten for Frelinghuysen, one for 
Phelps, and Robeson, the slated candidate of the caucus, had 
but eleven of his braves left. 

The subsequent revelations of the session showed that the 
fears of Krueger's party loyalty were not wholly without justi- 
fication. The watchful scrutiny that had been deemed prudent 
to keep him true during the senatorial struggle had to be re- 
newed when the canvass for the State Comptrollership began to 
assume shape a week afterwards. The term of Albert L Run- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 137 

yon, who had filled that important State office since 1871, was 
about to expire, and upon the joint meeting devolved the choice 
of his successor. Just as the hope of Hannon's desertion of his 
party had tempted the Republican caucus to give the senatorial 
nomination to Robeson, so the promise of Krueger's defection 
now beguiled them into taking Samuel Morrow, a bright-faced 
young Newark lawyer, as their candidate for State Comptroller. 
The Democratic caucus decided to confer the office upon General 
Robert F. Stockton, a son of famous old Commodore Stockton 
and a brother of John P. Stockton, whose achievements in peace 
and war had won for them the admiration of the nation. 

But Mr. Morrow had acted as counsel for Mr. Krueger, and the 
stolid- faced brewer- Assemblyman made no secret of his devotion 
to his cause, without regard to the action of his party's caucus. 
His failure to put in an appearance at the first of the joint meet- 
ings at which the choice between the two candidates was to be 
made left the Democrats without the forty- one votes needed to 
elect General Stockton, and the belief that it was part of a 
scheme to aid Morrow's election led Senator Abbett, as chair- 
man, to arbitrarily declare the joint meeting adjourned. The 
next day Krueger was in his seat, ready, as everybody believed, 
to vote for Morrow, but the solidity of the Republican vote was 
spoiled that time by the absence of Senator Sewell, of Camden. 
The R,epublican prints explained for him that he had stayed 
away to attend the annual meeting of the directors of a railroad 
of which he was the Superintendent at the time. Assurances 
were given that he had not known of Morrow's nomination till 
summoned by a dispatch from Trenton to vote for him, and that 
the moment the dispatch reached him he had sprung to a special 
locomotive and driven like mad for the State House. He 
arrived in Trenton only to learn that the Democrats, taking 
advantage of his absence, had forced an ineffectual ballot and 
then adjourned the meeting. Senator Hill, of Morris, had put 
Morrow's name formally before the joint meeting. Stockton's 
name had been presented by Assemblyman Bergen, of Somerset. 
-Stockton had received only thirty-six votes. Krueger and the 



138 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

thirty-nine Republicans present had voted for Morrow. Gen- 
eral Sewell's vote would have elected him. 

It was a week before the next joint meeting was held. Mean- 
while, Major Anderson, who was Comptroller's Runyon's chief 
deputy, had, though a Republican, reached an understanding 
with General Stockton for the retention of his office and had 
used his personal influence to induce his party friends in the 
two Houses to aid General Stockton. When the hour fqr the 
fateful roll-call arrived, the eighty- one Senators and Assembly- 
men were all in their seats. Krueger played away from Mor- 
row to watch the effect, and, with his Essex colleague, Gomer, 
and his Bergen colleague, Winant, cast a vote for William P. 
McMichael. The Republicans stood solidly to their caucus 
nominee on the first roll-call. But there were many who could 
not reconcile themselves to the methods by which he hoped to 
win ; and the fear that Krueger might, on the second ballot, 
join them and elect Morrow led a host of them to change their 
votes before the result was announced. Senator Hobart was the 
first to desert the Morrow standard. He surprised gallery and 
floor by voting plumply for General Stockton. Senators Sewell, 
Kirk, Matthews, Willetts, Hill, Leaming, Magie, Schultze and 
Plummer, and Assemblymen Scovel, Vail, Van Hise, Van 
Rensselaer, Voorhees, Griggs, Cunningham, Payne, Core, Wight- 
man, Ashley and Van Duyne followed suit in rapid succession. 
Thus General Stockton was given an overwhelming majority, 
and Chairman Abbett lost no time in declaring him duly elected. 

When he entered upon the discharge of his new functions 
General Stockton at once appointed Major Anderson to the chief 
place in the department. But the desertion of their caucus 
nominee by the most influential of the Republican members was 
as much designed to stamp Mr. Krueger's threatened abandon- 
ment of his party with the seal of their disapproval. 

The rest of the history of events under Governor Bedle's ad- 
ministration is easily recounted. The passage of the District 
Court act worked one of the notable reforms accomplished. 
The courts established by this act were to supersede in the cities 
what were technically described as the Courts for the Trial of 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 139 



Small Causes, but popularly known as ihe Justices' Courts. 
The determination of suits involving small sums of money had 
long been committed to the Justices of the Peace. The judicial 
instinct was too often lost in the greed of the incumbents, and 
their courts degenerated into mere collection agencies, the dig- 
nitary who presided over them acting as a collector with a com- 
mission, depending upon hU success in enforcing payment, in 
prospect, and as counsel for the plaintiif, judge and jury all 
rolled into one. No defense availed against any claim left with 
him for collection; the judgment was always for the court's 
clients, and then all the terrors of the law were invoked to 
enforce its payment. Only the more ignorant men sought elec- 
tion to the office, and by degrees they grew to be so oppressive 
and corrupt that their courts came to be recognized as an organ- 
ized and licensed system of extortion, and the necessity for their 
abolition became apparent. But no steps were taken towards 
that end till many of the conscienceless fellows who officiated 
in them had been put under indictment by the grand juries and 
forced to surrender their offices as the price of their freedom. 
Two or three of them had returned their commissions to Gov- 
ernor Bedle while he was on the bench. When public attention 
had thus been directed to their vicious abuse of function, an act 
taking from those in the cities all of their civil prerogatives, 
and transferring them to District Courts, conducted by ap- 
pointees of the Governor, easily won the favor of the Legisla- 
ture and Governor Bedle's approval. Like courts would have 
been established throughout the State but for the objection of 
the rural members that the constituencies they represented could 
not bear the expense attending them; and in the cities they 
would have been denuded of their criminal functions as they 
were of their civil, but that the State Constitution, in providing 
for the election of Justices of the Peace, seemed to give them 
some kind of constitutional countenance. 

When he came to the selection of new functionaries. Governor 
Bedle created no end of commotion among the more partisan of 
Democrats by nominating John A. Blair, a conspicuous Repub- 
lican lawyer, to one of the judgeships in Jersey City, and incurred^ 




Joseph D. Bedli;. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 141 

a more than fair degree of censure for the selection of his father- 
in-law, Bennington F. Randolph, for the other. The strife 
between the State House managers and the anti- State House 
managers had not yet expended itself, and Senator Abbett, as 
the leader of the anti's, made vigorous protest against the con- 
firmation of the nominees. As Mr. Abbett repre-ented the county 
in which these gentlemen were to serve, his refusal to consent to 
confirm ition was final, and Governor Bedle had to make the 
appointments ad interim^ after he had sent the Senators to their 
homes for the year. The next Senate confirmed them, however. 

A second excitement that attended his administration grew 
out of the great railway strike that, beginning on the Baltimore 
and Ohio lines in the West, spread sympathetically all over the 
country. The lawless rabble that exists in every community 
made the agitation attending the strike the cover for rapine and 
robbery; and great riots, which sacrificed both property and 
life, occurred in Chicago, Pittsburg and Philadelphia. The 
Jersey Central, more or less closely linked with the system on 
which the strike had originated, and the Morris and Essex, 
whose men had long complained of their treatment by their 
superiors, became involved, and an attempt was made, also, to 
call out the men on the Pennsylvania railroad. 

At that time George W. Barker, one of the most amiable 
railroad men in the country, was Superintendent of the lines 
running out from Jersey City to Pittsburg. He was not with- 
out fear that his men would be drawn into the controversy, and 
he felt that the time had come when a delegation of train- hands 
waited upon him one morning to notify him that they would be 
forced to abandon their engines at noon. He met them with 
smiling good humor, and with his most gracious air begged 
them to lay their grievances before him, that he might present 
them to his superiors and have them adjusted satisfactorily. 
They were obliged to confess that they had none, but the 
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers had ordered them to a^ 
sympathetic strike and there was no disobeying the command. 
Mr. Barker pointed out to them that the striking railroad men 
throughout the country were being held responsible for the tur- 



142 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

bulence aod destruction wrought by mobs with which no honest 
laborer could have any sympathy, and asking them if they were 
prepared to bear a like odium. He argued the point with them 
with such adroitness and amiability that two hours later the 
same delegation waited upon him to let him know that they had 
reconsidered their action, and determined to stay at their throt- 
tles as long as they were protected from outside violence. 

The consequence of these civilities was that there was, during 
all the strike, but a single occasion when anything approaching 
an interruption of traffic on the road occurred. The United 
States government had ordered a battery of artillery moved 
from Fort Hamilton to the West, and they were to go by the 
Pennsylvania roads. McMichael, the engineer of the locomo- 
tive that was to haul the train on which they were to be trans- 
ported, was threatened with death by a great throng of ugly- 
looking fellows who crowded into the depot, if he dared to open 
the throttle as long as that battery was behind him, and he 
abandoned his locomotive. Engineer David Kerr, a man of 
known courage, was asked by the company to take his place. 
He sprang unhesitatingly to the cab and bravely drove the loco- 
motive out of the shed through a shower of stones and bricks 
hurled at him by the angry and chagrined crowd. 

It may be assumed that if this greatest of the railroads that 
cross her bosom had been opened to the turbulent mobs 
that besieged the Pennsylvania boundaries of the State, 
the invasion of New Jersey would have been completed ; and 
Superintendent Barker's admirable handling of his subordinates 
strengthened the arm of the State more than was probably real- 
ized at the time. 

The participation of the Jersey Central and the Morris and 
Essex hands in the strike still left two of the great highways 
of travel open to the besiegers, and it became incumbent on the 
Governor to guard the points where those roads entered the State. 
This he did with the aid of the citizen soldiery. Making Police 
Headquarters in Jersey City his military headquarters, he called 
several regiments of the National Guard to arms. The import- 
ant points to protect were in the southern end, where the brigade 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 143 

of which General Sewell was the commander was stationed. He 
moved his forces from their several armories to the threatened 
scene of conflict so quietly and so expeditiously that the hills 
around Phillipsburg had been turned into a camp even before 
the masses knew that the men had been ordered out; and he 
deployed his little band of soldiers so skillfully that, although 
transportation was interrupted for a season, the rabble was kept 
at bay. His men guarded the trains over the two obstructed 
lines, protected the new crews the companies put in charge of 
them, and finally restored the broken communication with New 
York. Governor Bedle and General Sewell earned no end of com- 
mendation from all parts of the country for the skill and courage 
with which they had saved New Jersey from the destruction 
that had marked the progress of the strike in the surrounding 
States. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Which, More ok Less Adequately, Describes the Spectacular 

Convention at Which Leon Abbett was Defeated in 

Hls Gubernatorial Aspirations, and General 

Mc.Clellan was Made the Democratic 

Nominee in His Stead. 




IP HE selection of his successor was the crowning agitation 

of Governor Bedle's administration. The State House 

autocracy with which Governor Bedle had always been 

identified measured lances with its factional opponents 

of the Abbett- McPherson wing for the last time, and won only 

by a trick. 

It will be recalled that in its first encounter with the oppo- 
sition it had suffered defeat in the election of John R. Mc- 
Pherson to the United States Senate over Judge Ashbel Green. 
In this renewal of the contest, McPherson's skillful ally, 
Abbett, threw down- the glove to them with his demand for the 
nomination for the Governorship. 

It has already been said that all through his legislative career 
Mr. Abbett's course had been one of unfaltering opposition to 
the domination of the State House magnates. He had haled 
them to the bar of public opinion as purse-proud aristocrats who 
had no sympathy with the masses ; and, springing always to the 
defense of the common people, he had posed as the Great Com- 
moner of the State. The State House people were indeed a trifle 
overstrained and high-toned, and Abbett was specially obnoxious 
to them from the two points of view that he had made himself 
their political enemy, and that he was " not of their set." It 
had been suspected, when he lent Mr. McPherson his effective 
assistance, in holding the narrow Democratic majority in the 
caucus of the winter together, that an offensive and defensive 
(144) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 145 

alliance had been formed between them, and that Mr. Abbett's 
reward for his fidelity to Mr. McPherson's interests was to be 
Mr. McPherson's assistance in reaching the Governorship. The 
State House managers paid but little heed at the start to the 
rumor of his coming candidacy, and there is a story that the 
Senator would not indeed have been over-anxious for the nomi- 
nation at that time but for his desire to please his wife. Mrs. 
Abbett longed to be the chief lady in the State. A handsome 
and stately blonde, with a charming personality, she had the 
graces and accomplishments that would have adorned such a 
station, and she lent herself to a zealous advocacy of her hus- 
band's promotion. A pretty tradition tells of the bewitching 
importunity with which she urged the leaders whom she met at 
the resorts during the summer to " help me make Leon Gov- 
ernor." Captivated, some — too gallant to refuse, others — many 
of them forgot their factional relations, and promised ; and so 
the State House managers were surprised, when the canvass 
actually began, to see that some of their main supporters had 
been tempted from them. By the middle of September they 
had come to realize that the Abbett-McPherson combination 
was as likely to prove as bothersome in the gubernatorial arena 
as it had been in the senatorial. 

Their apprehensions drove them into conference, and they met 
in New York one night several weeks before the convention 
was to assemble. Senator Randolph, Governor Bedle, Attorney- 
General Yanatta, Clerk in Chancery Little, Secretary of State 
Kelsey and one or two others whose names were never given 
out, gathered to consider the situation and determine upon a 
candidate to confront the magnetic man from Hudson with. 

But little time was given to the consideration of the first 
point. The plain situation, as they saw it, was that Abbett was 
a dangerous possibility and that their continued predominance 
in party councils necessitated his defeat. The second point was 
not so easy of solution. There was only one available man 
within sight and they were not over-enamoured of him. They 
thought that perhaps the historic name of his family might rally 
the Democratic masses to the support of ex-United States Senator 

10 



146 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

John P. Stockton, but he was not quite agreeable to them as a 
candidate. Had they not crowded him out of the United States 
Senate with Randolph ? And they felt it safe to assume that in 
the event of his election he would not hesitate to retaliate upon 
them. 

It was desirable, too, as a means of breaking the local strength 
of Abbett's candidacy, that their rival candidate should be taken 
from a section of the State nearer to Abbett's own county of 
Hudson than Mercer, which was Stockton's home. But where 
was the man in that section with sufficient personality to com- 
mand a following ? The name of Frederick H. Teese, of Essex, 
was canvassed from that standpoint, and it was agreed that if 
the suggestion of his nomination were received with anything 
like enthusiasm they would advance him ; that if it were not, 
they would give their support, as a last resort, to Stockton, but 
that with some one Abbett was to be beaten at all hazards. 

The publication by Judge Teese, a few days later, of a letter 
refusing the use of his name, was accepted by the Abbett con- 
tingent as a notice that they had found a more available man, 
but till the moment he was sprung upon the convention they 
did not dream who he was. 

But one man iff all of Hudson county probably knew the 
name they proposed to conjure with. That one man was Orestes 
Cleveland, a politician of equal influence with Mr. Abbett, who 
had sworn eternal enmity against Abbett. Mr. Cleveland had 
for years been a leading spirit in Hudson county afiairs. He 
had served as Mayor of Jersey City for several terms, and 
had represented Hudson and Essex, when those two counties 
made up the Sixth district, in the Congress of the nation. He 
was a skillful and resourceful manipulator, a man of large 
wealth, liberal to the point of waste, President of the busy 
Dixon Crucible Works, a chief mogul among the American 
Institute managers — the man, indeed, whose suggestion and 
advocacy had originated and inspired the movement for the 
observance of the Nation's Centennial Anniversary by the great 
fair at Philadelphia. His associations were varied and exten- 
sive ; his interests widespread. He was known personally to a 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 147 

large proportion of the voters in the county, and his office in 
the Dixon works was the center from which all the political 
lines radiated. He had finished his term in Congress in 1871, 
and, tempted by the prospect of being the Centennial Mayor of 
Jersey City, had sought the nomination for that municipal office 
in 1876. Henry Traphagen, who was then serving as Mayor, 
was entitled by party usage to re nomination, and his friends 
retaliated upon Cleveland, for being the means of depriving him 
of it, at the polls, and helped to throw the honor he so eagerly 
coveted to Charles Seidler, the active head of the Lorillard 
tobacco house, whom the Republicans had nominated. 

Mr. Cleveland recovered his ground sufficiently after this 
defeat to become a candidate for delegate to the National 
Democratic Convention at St. Louis that, a few months later, 
nominated Samuel J. Tilden for the Presidency. Mr. Abbett 
was a candidate for the same distinction, and as it was not pos- 
sible for both to have it, it wag necessary for one to retire. An 
arrangement was finally made by which Abbett was to go to 
St. Louis and Cleveland was to be made a member of the 
National Democratic Executive Committee. Mr. Abbett was 
chosen to act as chairman of the State delegation to the con- 
vention, and when, after Mr. Tilden had been nominated, the 
States were called upon to name their executive committeemen, 
it became Mr. Abbett's duty, as sponsor for the delegation, to 
hand in the name of the New Jersey member. When he arose 
to respond, he answered, however, not with the name of Orestes 
Cleveland, as he had promised, but with that of Miles Ross, of 
New Brunswick, a veteran leader of the middle- state Democracy. 
This breach of the engagement made Mr. Cleveland white with 
anger and resentment, and he vowed that if he could prevent it, 
Senator Abbett should never hold another elective position. 

Mr. Abbett's appearance before the State Convention of 1877 
for the gubernatorial nomination affijrded him his first oppor- 
tunity to strike back, and he and the State House autocrats 
found a common ground of sympathy in their dislike of him. 

The convention was held on Wednesday, September 20th. 
The preceding night had been one of unusual excitement in 



148 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Tienton. The hotels were thronged with boisterous workers 
from all parts of the State. Abbett's was the name on most of 
their tongues. That the delegates from counties which he could 
not reach were divided between Stockton, John T. Bird, William 
A. Righter and John McGregor, was accepted as an indication 
of his coming triumph, and the more so when, as the night wore 
on, it was noised around the hotel corridors and the barrooms 
that delegations with opposing candidates were apparently unable 
to agree on any one of them. 

When the delegates trudged to the Opera House at noon they 
found the places which they expected to occupy already filled 
with an outside rabble. It did not seem to occur to the Abbett 
managers that these could not have secured admission to the 
benches without the connivance of the State Committee's guards 
at the door, and they were looked upon as intruders who had 
negligently^been allowed to pass the sentinels. It escaped their 
notice, too, that these trespassers were skillfully distributed all 
over the hall. The delegates, of course, clamored for their 
seats, but the impudent intruders refused to make room for 
them, and the great throng was in an awful hubbub when 
William W. Shippen, of Hoboken, Chairman of the Democratic 
State Committee, hammered the pine table on the platform with 
his cane for order. The noisy demands of the standing dele- 
gates for their places were quieted for a time by Mr. Shippen's 
assurance that seats would be provided^for them in due season, 
and Benjamin Williamson, of Elizabeth, the shrewd and wily 
ex-Chancellor, was named by Mr. Shippen as the temporary 
Chairman. The hour before dinner 'was spent in the usual 
organization preliminaries, and the convention arose for a recess. 

When the delegates re-assembled at two o'clock, the platform 
of the party was read by the Chairman of the Committee on 
Organization and accepted, and then Ashbel Green moved that 
the convention proceed to the selection of the candidate for 
Governor. The delegates had found their seats, when they re- 
turned to the hall, in the hands of the same outside crowd that 
had displaced them in the morning, and their renewed clamors 
for their places precipitated again the bedlam^that had marked 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 149 

the morEiDg session. Chairman Williamson made a pretence of 
aiding them to secure their seats, but the outsiders were re- 
luctant to go and the Chairman was not firmly insistent that 
they should. Some of Ihe delegations attempted to force them 
out, and there was a pitched battle between them and the Union 
county men up in one of the gallery- lofts that nearly turned 
the convention into a riot. 

Amid a din that made the announcement of the names almost 
inaudible, the counties were called upon for nominations. 
Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumber- 
land, had no name to present. E-sex responded with the names 
of William A. Righter, John McGregor and one man timidly 
articulated General McClellan's. Then it began to be apparent 
why the crowd of outsiders had been permitted to enter the 
hall. They broke into an uproar of cheers that delayed the 
proceedings for several minutes. Gloucester named Benjamin 
F. Carter. When Hudson was called, Charles H. Winfield 
presented the name of Leon Abbett in a speech of splendid 
eloquence. Hunterdon named Bird, Mercer named Stockton, 
Middlesex named Wright Robbins, Passaic named her courtly 
Senator, John Hopper — and the roll was called for the votes. 

Before the result had been announced, a thin, piping voice 
pierced the din from the shadow of the gallery. It was heard 
shrilly calling the attention of the delegates to the unlikelihood, 
because of the multitude of candidates and the bitterness of 
their rivalries, of an agreement upon any one of them, and then 
it launched out into an exordium of one about whose fitness 
and availability there could not be two opinions. It talked 
about the greatness of a Democratic soldier who had led the 
Union troops to victory in the Rebellion ; a man who had been 
reviled and spat upon by the Republican national leaders be- 
cause of his Democracy ; a man who had even been mentioned 
in connection with the presidency ; a man who — 

" Name the man," shouted the crowd on the floor. 

"Name him," echoed back the impatient throng in the gallery. 

"Name him," was the command that, as with one voice, 
swept the great audience from dome to pit. 



150 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

" I name him," screamed the little orator with penetrating 
voice ; " I name George B. McClellan, of Essex." 

It was as if a brand had been dropped into a powder maga- 
zine. The climax, to the effectiveness of which the invading 
throng of outsiders had been hired to contribute, was reached, 
and they broke into a bedlam of hurrahs. Even the Abbett 
contingent, mistaking the pre-arranged demonstration for an 
outburst of genuine and spontaneous enthusiasm, joined in the 
approving chorus. One wave of cheers would scarcely die 
away before a new one would be started on its whirlwind 
course. And when the claquers let go because they had ex- 
hausted themselves, some one turned a picture that had been 
suspended, face to the wall, from a wire that extended overhead 
to the proEcenium, and moved it slowly along the wire from the 
back of the stage into the view of the exciled and shouting 
throng. It was the face of McClellan, marching to a new 
victory. The thousand men in the house greeted it as it ad- 
vanced toward them with delirious enthusiasm. The band in 
the gallery caught the inspiration — by instruction, it may be 
presumed — and as it moved majestically forward struck up the 
old familiar battle hymn, " See, The Conquering Hero Comes." 

And there, over the heads of the chief men of the State, he 
seemed to be coming again to take command of the army of 
hailing devotees in front of him. And, in the midst of it all, 
the shrill little voice hidden in the shadow of the gallery stole 
forth into the din and the roar again to deliver the fioal blow 
to Abbett's hopes. 

" I move that General George B. McClellan be nominated by 
acclamation," it spoke. 

The picture and the band and the motion were all working 
together to sway the crowd, and then the delegations that bad 
been held in check by the State House magnates were let loose 
to climax the pre-arranged display. They tumbled over one 
another in their eagerness to drop their local candidates for the 
hero of the hour. Colonel Zulick swept the hall with enthu- 
siasm when he delivered the great vote of Essex to McClellan. 
Hunterdon broke from Bird to the Orange mountain warrior. 




George B. McClellan. 



152 MODERN BATTLES OF TREJ^TON. 

Mercer left Stockton for him. Middlesex went from Wright 
Robbins to him. The claquers skillfully sandwiched between 
delegates all through the hall, the moving picture, the band, 
the flopping delegations, were too much for the composure of 
the convention. Even the Abbett counties caught the infection, 
and their delegates, anxious to be with the winning side, became 
part of the tumult. And finally, his own county of Hudson 
joined the hired claquers in making McClellan's nomination 
unanimous.* 

Mr. Winfield tried to stem the tide by sonorous protests that 
General McClellan was not a resident of the State of New 
Jersey. Short and round David Dodd, of Essex, who had 
answered the nominating voice that came from the shadow of 
the gallery with a hearty and enthusiastic second, declared that 
he was, and the convention accepted his assurances with a new 
burst of cheers. Secretary Kelsey and Henry S Little, inter- 
ested spectators of the spectacular coup they had arranged for 
Senator Abbett, fell on each other'rf shoulders, in one of the 
boxes off the proscenium, when the day's work was finished,. 
and Governor Bedle's cherub face became radiant when the 
news of Abbett's defeat was borne to him in the Executive 
Chamber. 

But the most delighted man in all New Jersey was Orestes 
Cleveland. The dramatic defeat of his rival was his work. 
McClellan's name had been suggested to his mind as an excellent 
one to conjure with by an incident of the convention that, three 
years before, had put Governor Bedle in nomination. A dele- 
gate to that convention, Mr. Cleveland had remembered that 
when the county of Salem gave out the name of a McClellan as 
its representative on one of the organization committees, the as- 
sembled multitude, mistaking the man for the hero of Antietam, 
had broken into rapturous applause ; and now when both him- 

*The clerks of the Democratic Convention, who kept the tally of the votes- 
by county as they were announced, fignred the vote from the unannounced 
roll-call this way : Abbett, 304 ; Kighter, 103 ; McGregor, 81 ; McClellan, 171 ; 
Carter, 39; Bird, 63; Stockton, 153 ; Hop])er, 40 ; Robbins, 12; A. A. Harden- 
bergli, 3. After the cliange of counties to McClellan, the vote stood: Mc- 
Clellan, 804; Abbett, 156; Carter, 21, and Stocl<ton, 2. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 15a 

self and the State House managers were in quest of a candidate 
who could enthuse the Democratic masses against Abbett, he had 
whispered the name into the ears of the State House chieftains. 

It had been part of their scheme to keep the name secret till 
they were ready to spring it on the convention, and their move- 
ments had been so cat-like that not even a hint of it had reached 
the Abbett headquarters. Their control of the State Committee 
had afforded them the fullest opportunity for the perfection of 
their plans. It gave them a Chairman to aid them in giving 
drift to the movements of the convention. It gave them the 
freedom of the meeting-place that enabled them to hide that re- 
versed picture in the shades at the rear of the stage, and to pack 
the house with the hired claquers who were to greet it, when it 
was shown, with a hubbub that should take the convention off 
its feet. 

The Republican editors took the cue from Winfield's protest, 
and made the most of the doubts as to General McClellan's 
eligibility because of his want of residence in the State. 

"If I am not a resident of New Jersey," the General said, 
between puffs of smoke, to an enterprising newspaper man who 
visited him at his showy residence on the Orange mountains a 
day or two after his nomination, " I have no residence anywhere 
in the country. I have lived here since 1863; voted at many 
elections and cast my ballot here for Seymour in 1868 and 
Tilden last year. At the presidential election of 1864 you 
know I could not vote." 

The Republicans held their convention for the selection of a 
candidate against the General the following week. The signs 
of McClellan's popularity were so convincing and overwhelming 
that no one was anxious to risk the battle against him, and by 
common consent it was agreed to let Dr. William A. Newell, 
of Cumberland, have the nomination. Joseph Coult, of Essex, 
Chairman of the Republican State Committee, called the con- 
vention to order, and ex- Judge Charles H. Voorhis, of Bergen, 
was made the temporary Chairman. General Judson Kilpat- 
rick was chosen by the Committee on Permanent Organizition 
for permanent Chairman. Some of the counties put Senator 



154 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Frederic A. Potts' name before the convention. General Kil- 
patrick, too, was mentioned, but he promptly declined. The 
majority of the delegations presented Dr. Newell's came. On 
the first formal ballot Newell had 360 voles; Potts, 142; 
William Walter Phelpp, of Bergen, 28, and Gardner R. Colby, 
of Essex, 30, and Dr. Newell was declared the nominee. 

The campaign was begun on both sides as soon as the two 
tickets had been completed. McClellan's visits to the different 
parts of the State were like a triumphal march. His mass 
meetings were crowded to suffocation, and throngs, eager to 
touch the tips of his fingers, surged around his carriage as it 
went through the streets. One night, Abraham Browning, as 
famous among lawyers for his blue coat and brass buttons and 
ruffled shirt front as for his learning, entertained him at his 
house in Camden, and the crowd that choked the streets to greet 
him, even in that stronghold of Republicanism, made his passage 
almost impossible. 

" What do you do to these people," Supreme Court Clerk Lee, 
who was with him, asked, "that makes them so fond of you?" 

" I don't remember ever to have done more than my duty," 
was McClellan's answer. "A soldier is after all a human being, 
but then you remember sympathy begets sympathy, and when 
you like a man he likes you. When I hear the shouts of a 
crowd like this outside my carriage window, and realize that I 
am the occasion of it all, I feel as though I were traveling in an 
unknown world. It's like a dream, and I can scarcely bring 
mjself to a full consciousness that it is real." 

In marked contrast to the receptions accorded to General Mc- 
Clellan were those which Dr. Newell received. By his attacks 
upon the chief men of his own party he made new enemies at 
every place at which he spoke, and nothing could have been 
more maladroit than his entire canvass from beginning to end. 
At Camden, for instance, he had a fling to make at what he 
characterized as the enormous expenses attending the mainte- 
nance of the National Guard. General Sewell, the chieftain at 
once of one of the brigades of the National Guard and of the 
party whose suffrages he was seeking, was one of his offended 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 155 



hearers. At Woodbury, he declared that one of the most un- 
justifiable expenditures made by the State was that for the Fish 
Commissioners. An influential Republican member of the Fish 
Commission went away from that meeting vowing vengeance 
upon him. In Newark, he took occasion to denounce the " ex- 
travagance " of the Morris Plains Asylum Commission. Ex- 
Congressman George A. Halsey, the most powerful Republican 
leader Essex has ever known, was a working member of that 
commission, and before he left the hall he told Dr. Newell that 
that speech would cost him two thousand Republican votes. 
When election day came the offended Republican leaders helped 
the Democrats to thtir victory. Mr. Halsey manifested his 
displeasure by even voting an open ticket against Newell, and 
on the count of the ballots General McClellan was over twelve 
thousand ahead of him. Newell's percentage of the total vote 
was the smallest that had ever been achieved by a Republican 
candidate up to that time. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Which is a Medley, Embracing Keferences to a Particularly 

Unsatisfactory Democratic Legislature, to General Mott's 

Trial for Abusing Convicts and to the Bankruptcy 

op the Cities of Elizabeth and Eahway. 




J^biNERA-L McCLELLAN was inaugurated Governor 
^#j^ in January, 1878, with the usual ceremonies, except 
that, because of the expected throng, the exercises^ 
usually held either in the Senate Chamber or at Taylor 
Opera House, took place on the green in front of the State 
House, where a platform had been erected for the committees 
and the guests. Senator Charles B. Moore, of Somerset, was 
Chairman of the Senate Committee of Arrangements, and Assem- 
blyman Dudley S. Steele, of Hudson, of the House Committee. 
A notable feature of the occasion was the presence of a large 
number of distinguished New Yorkers — Corporation Counsel 
William C. Whitney, ex- Governor John T. HoflPman, Comp- 
troller John Kelly, General Martin T. McMahon and Banker 
Edward Schell among them. 

The Legislature that opened the new administration was 
Democratic in both branches. The Senate had twelve Demo- 
crats and nine Republicans ; the House, thirty-three Democrats, 
twenty- seven Republicans. It was the first occasion since 1870 
on which both Houses had been in control of the Democrats. 

There were a number of exceptionally brilliant men in the 
Senate, but the Assembly won the reputation of being the worst 
that had gathered in Trenton in a quarter of a century. Par- 
tisanship ran riot, and the dignified Senators had to keep their 
eyes well opened to intercept the " strike " bills that were rushed 
to them for concurrence. Not satisfied to trust again to the 
gerrymander that had brought them to Trenton, they devised 
(156) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 157 

another gerrymander that was believed to assure to the Demo- 
crats the control of the State for many years, and in the hope of 
reducing the Republican vote they even passed an act disfran- 
chising college students. Dominie John H. Robinson, a droll 
and popular member from one of the Passaic districts, told them 
that they ought to be satisfied with an arrangement of the As- 
sembly lines that had given them thirty-three of the sixty seats 
in the House, and warned them that the changes they proposed 
to make might turn the majority the other way. The dominie 
proved himself to be a prophet. The next Legislature elected 
under the new lines had thirty-three Republicans and twenty- 
seven Democrats. The act disfranchising the college students 
was a nine days' wonder throughout the State, and at the election 
in the fall produced violent disorders at Princeton, the seat of 
Nassau Hall, and New Brunswick, where Rutgers College is 
situated. The students insisted on voting and resisted all 
attempts to interfere with them. 

The Senate clashed with Governor McClellan over some of 
the appointments, and there was a good deal of bad blood be- 
tween him and that body. He retaliated upon Senators Pid- 
cock, of Hunterdon, and Hendrickson, of Monmouth, because 
they had been Abbett's allies in the gubernatorial convention of 
the preceding fall, and snubbed them when it fell to his lot to 
make appointments for their counties. They were especially 
embittered because of their suspicion that Abbett's bitterest foe, 
" Staff" Little, was his accepted adviser in these instances. The 
controversy between the Senate and the Governor continued in 
fact all through his administration. The Republican Legis- 
lature of 1879 as violently opposed his nominations on the 
ground that his judiciary selections should be made on a non- 
partisan basis. 

The only incident connected with the Legislature of 1878 
that calls for any attention here, was the arraignment of Major- 
General Mott, who was then the Keeper of the State Prison, on 
charges of inhuman treatment of the convicts. A prisoner 
named Snook, who had been convicted in the Somerset county 
courts, through the efforts of Prosecutor James J. Bergen, of a 



158 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

heinous crime, and sentenced to fifteen years in the State Prison,, 
was reported to the county physician of Mercer as having died 
suddenly in the State Prison. Rumors spread outside the prison 
walls that he had been a victim of needlessly cruel discipline. 
On inquiry the discovery was made that the man had been 
gagged and forced into a dungeon and strung up by his wrists — 
his toes barely touching the floor — and, in spite of his piteous 
plea with his torturer not to kill him, left there for hours. 
When the under-keeper went in to see how he was getting 
along he found him dead. The discovery led to a general 
inquiry as to Mott's management of the prison. It was shown 
that he was harsh and overbearing and a heartless martinet, but 
for political reasons the House refused to present him to the 
Senate for impeachment. 

Agreeably to Dominie Robinson's prophecy, the Legislature 
of 1879 had a working Republican majority in each House. 
Schuyler B. Jackson, of Essex — a brother of F. Wolcott Jack- 
son, known throughout the railroad world as the Superintendent 
of the New York division of the Pennsylvania railroad — was 
Speaker of the Assembly, and General William J. Sewell 
President of the Senate. The two Houses had hardly got 
together before the Republican majority started hot- footed after 
the State officials. A fee system for their compensation pre- 
vailed, and the incomes of the holders of some of the State 
offices were said to be enormous.* Secretary of State Kelsey's 
office was reputed to be worth $25,000 a year. Ex- Senator 
Henry S. Little, who had become Clerk of the Court of Chan- 
cery, was said to be in receipt of $30,000 a year. Supreme 
Court Clerk Benjamin F. Lee was understood to have a more 
than comfortable income from his office. The Republicans 
might not have been particularly interested in these figures if 
they had not felt assured that the money largely went into the 
Democratic campaign fund. They called public attention to 
these rich places, and started out to make them salaried positions 

*The fee system had been discussed before, and the Legislature of 1876 
attempted to make an inquiry even as to the Governor's fees, but he refused 
to be catechised. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 159 

instead of fee positions. The imperiled officials surrounded 
them with amiable social influences, however, and succeeded in 
drawing some of the fire from the guns that were trained upon 
them. The salary system was not established, but a series of 
acts — denounced, of course, by the Democratic press as of purely 
partisan inspiration, but put through in spite of the noisy pro- 
tests of the Democratic minority — skimmed about thirty-three 
per cent, off their fees. The Lfglslature, furthermore, lost no 
time in undoing the partisan work of its predecessor, and re- 
pealed, among other acts, the obnoxious College act. 

Financial embarrassments with which two or three of the 
cities were threatened by the operations of indiscreet or dishonest 
officials at about this time, pointed to the necessity of placing in 
the hands of the people a check of some kind. The cities of 
Elizabeth and Rahway, which had been plundered right and 
left, defaulted during the year in the payment of the interest 
upon their bonds, and both were driven into bankruptcy. The 
Elizabeth city failure was due to the improvident extension into 
the untenanted woods lying around her of broad and hand- 
somely-paved highways. There was no public necessity for 
them. The only purpose of their construction was the enrich- 
ment of the contractors who laid them out and the colluding 
city officials who authorized the work. It would be years be- 
fore the property abutting upon the highways could find a 
market ; such a thing as assessing it for benefits was out of the 
question, and the whole cost of the " improvement " was thrown 
back upon the city at large. Mainly from this cause the city 
found herself staggering under a debt of $6,000,000, and so 
exhausted by 'previous payments of interest money that, in 1879, 
she was unable to bear the burden longer and sent notices of her 
collapse to her creditors. 

These, becoming apprehensive, started after her in full tilt 
and with the apparent determination of seizing her and hold- 
ing her at a ransom. The Singer Sewing Machine Company^ 
as a corporation, and George R. MacKenzle, its President, as 
an individual, and the Mutual Benefit Insurance Company of 
Newark held between them the bulk of the discredited securi- 



160 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 




ties. They commeuced proceedings by mandamus in the State 
courts to force the city authorities to make provision in the en- 
suing tax levy for the payment of the accrued debt. Judgment 
was a mere matter of form, and one morning they walked into 
the office of Comptroller A. B. Carleton to take possession of 
all of the city property. For several weeks Mr. Carleton's 
office was the liveliest place in the State, and he and his fellow 
city officials were kept on a continual dance by their effiarts to 
dodge the legal processes with which they were followed. 

Eventually, in order 
to evade the court's or- 
■^ ^^ der directing the mak- 

ing of an appropriation 
to meet the claims, a 
majority of the city 
Board of Assessors — 
that whose duty it was 
to make the levy — 
n signed their offices. 
This, of course, brought 
\ fresh embarrassments to 
• the city, because, with- 
,^ out a Board of Assess- 
ors, it was just as im- 
y' possible to raise money 

to meet the current ex- 
penses as to raise money 
to appease the creditors. 
Left without a means of paying its teachers, or its firemen, or 
its policemen, or its Mayor and financial officers, Elizabeth was 
practically no longer a city at all. In despair they sought Sena- 
tor Abbett for relief from the dilemma, and he in time devised 
a shrewd scheme that made every bankrupt city, like Elizabeth, 
the ward of the State, and gave to the Governor authority to 
appoint a tax commission from among the citizens, with simple 
power to raise sufficient money to maintain the local government. 
This board, when it was appointed, was a State board, and could 




A. B Carleton. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 161 



not therefore be pursued as part of the city government by the 
importunate creditors. Its functions were limited to the raising 
of only so much money as was needed to meet current local ex- 
penses, and it could not consequently be compelled to include in 
its appropriations any of the moneys demanded in settlement 
of the debt. Elizabeth staggered along under this provisional 
kind of government for a good many years. The creditors saw 
that they were balked, and ten or twelve years after the day of 
bankruptcy they entered into negotiations that resulted in the 
settlement of the claims at about fifty cents on the dollar. Her 
bankruptcy set the city back at least twenty-five years in pro- 
gress and improvement. Property lost its value, and the hand- 
some residences on " Quality Hill " were abandoned by their 
owners to their hostlers or to care-takers. 

The cheated and defrauded taxpayers started in pursuit of the 
corrupt officials who had brought their miseries upon them the 
moment the default became known. Several were haled to the 
bar for fraud and conspiracy, and Supreme Court Judge Bennet 
Van Syckel, sitting in the Oyer and Terminer, spent several 
days in the trial of Leggett, the City Treasurer, and upon his 
conviction sent him to State Prison for seven years, to keep com- 
pany with a colony of distinguished bank and city oflBcials whose 
presence in the State Prison at the same time made one of the 
corners of the institution famously known as " Bankers' Row." 
The bankruptcy of Rahway was a much less pretentious and 
exciting incident of the time. She had recklessly run into debt 
for new water works and a whole line of superfluous et ceteras, 
and was just unable to meet her obligations because of her ex- 
travagances. Jersey City, too, was tottering on the brink, and 
three years later was in such financial peril that her frightened 
Board of Finance resigned in dismay and it required all the 
skill and daring of Allan L. McDermott, Thomas D. Jordan, 
who subsequently became the Controller of the great Equitable 
Assurance Society of New York, of Emil E. Datz and ex- Con- 
gressman Augustus A. Hardenbergh, who succeeded them, to 
save her from ruin. 

11 



162 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

All these impending disasters were in the air while the Legis- 
lature of 1879 was in session, and the necessity for action that 
would protect the people against their untrustworthy rulers en- 
gaged the best minds in both Houses. The fruition of their 
deliberations was the presentation by Garret A. Hobart, the 
brilliant Senator from Passaic, of an act authorizing the sum- 
mary investigation of the books of city and county officials. It 
commands the Presiding Justice in any Circuit to make the ex- 
amination, with the aid of experts if he needs them, upon the 
application of twenty- five freeholders. The Legislature gave 
its concurrence to the act almost without debate, and Governor 
McClellan's signature made it law. Singularly enough, not- 
withstanding the opportunity it opens for the immediate dis- 
covery of fraud or irregularity on the part of ruling officials, the 
value of this important act seems not to have been thoroughly 
appreciated by the taxpayers of the State, and it has been called 
into play much less frequently than the public good has required. 

The prohibition by the State Constitution of special laws still 
continued to puzzle the legislative mind. Interested schemers 
had devised all kinds of devices to dodge it, and the Supreme Court 
had set aside their acts, one after the other, as violative of the 
new constitutional principle ; and it began to be realized that 
something like a system of general legislation was the only thing 
that the courts would uphold. The Legislature had undertaken 
to deal with the matter itself through what was known as the 
" High Joint " Committee, which devised a scheme of general 
laws which the Legislature refused to accept. By authority of 
the Legislature of 1879, Governor McClellan selected special 
commissions, one with ex- Senators Magie and Abbett among the 
members, to frame a general law for the government of cities, 
and another having Professor Atherton, of Rutgers, ex-Senator 
John Hopper, of Passaic, and John P. Jackson among its mem- 
bers, to codify the tax laws. Each of the commissions submitted 
a scheme, but it was altogether too ethereal to go. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

In Which Abbett Joins Hands With His State House Eivals to 

Even up Scores With Orestes Cleveland, and the Kepub- 

LicANS Suffer a Great Disappointment Because of 

Their Failure to Elect Potts to 

THE Governorship. 




^HE breach in the Democratic party grew wider and 
wider as the campaign of 1880, in which a successor 
was to be chosen for Governor McClellan, drew near. 
The State House magnates were visibly staggering 
under the blow Senator McPherson had administered in 1877, 
and their power was on the wane, while Senator Abbett's popu- 
lar policy was bringing him into greater prominence every day as 
their rival in leadership. The Republicans believed that these 
factional disturbances in the household of their opponents placed 
the State within their reach, and there was a general concurrence 
of sentiment among them that the nomination of their strongest 
man might give the State a Republican government. After a 
careful comparison of records and an accurate weighing up of 
forces, they concluded that with Frederic A. Potts at the head 
of their ticket hope would look like an assurance. Mr. Potts 
was one of the kings of the coal trade in New York City, of the 
highest social standing, of large wealth, with widespread corpora- 
tion alliances, tall, full-bodied and stately, of florid face and fine 
presence, who had held his own with Abbett, Magie, Hopper 
and the other intellectual giants of the two Senates in which he 
had served as the Senator from Hunterdon, and altogether the 
kind of man whom no body of politicians would think of in- 
viting to lead a forlorn hope. The Democrats shrewdly guessed 
^^not S9 shrewdly either, for it was an easy guess after all — 
when the probability of his selection as the Republican candidate 

(163) 



164 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

became known, that their opponents were preparing to give- 
them the hardest fight for the mastery they had seen in many a 
year ; and when so early a day as August 20th was fixed as the 
date for the holding of the Republican State Convention, it was 
plain that the Republicans did not propose to allow the vote to 
be taken without the most searching and thorough canvass of 
the State. 

When, on the designated day in August, the delegates assem- 
bled in the Opera House at Trenton, Amos Clark, Jr., of Eliza- 
beth, Chairman of the Republican State Committee, called them 
to order, and ex-Judge William T. Hoffman, a noted Hudson 
county lawyer, officiated as their temporary President. The 
Committee on Organization reported ex-Secretary George M. 
Robeson as permanent Chairman, and on the call of the counties 
for nominations Mr. Potts' name was practically the only one 
presented. A few of the delegates were clamorous for Kilpat- 
rick, but the eloquent little cavalryman leaped to the foot-lights- 
to beg them to fall in line for the Hunterdon Senator. Further 
call of the roll was unnecessary. Some one moved Potts' nomi- 
nation by acclamation, and it went through with a hurrah. 

The Republicans believed, when Mr. Potts, at his summer 
home at Monmouth Beach, notified the committee deputed 
to wait upon him, of his willingness to accept the nomi- 
nation thus tendered to him, that they had assured his 
election by combining all the great corporation interests in the 
State upon his candidacy. The Pennsylvania railroad, mar- 
shaled into politics by General Sewell, had long been recognized 
as an enormous Republican factor. The Jersey Central, always 
at the beck and call of that old war-horse of the Democracy, 
Judge Francis S. Lathrop, had, if it was the ally of either side, 
been rather counted as a Democratic aid. Mr. Potts was him- 
self one of the most influential of the Jersey Central stock- 
holders, and there was an idea in Republican circles that his 
presence in the field would make the old Judge indifferent for 
once about his party's success. The railroads that were not 
thus represented by his candidacy were easily amenable to the 




George C. Ludlow. 



166 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

influence of Senator Garret A. Hobart, of Passaic, to the lot of 
whom, as the new Chairman of the Republican State Com- 
mittee, the conduct of Mr. Potts' canvass fell. The better the 
influences that led up to the nomination were understood, the 
clearer it seemed to be that the corporations of the State had 
massed themselves for a contest with the people. 

It was a powerful combination, but the time was inopportune, 
A deep-seated dissatisfaction with the exemption of the rail- 
roads from the payment of the tax burdens imposed upon indi- 
viduals, which developed itself with tremendous force right 
afterwards, prevailed throughout the State. It was particularly 
strong in Hudson county, where vast areas of railroad property 
were withdrawn from the taxable assets and the cost of main- 
taining the local governments which mainly protected these 
railroad possessions fell almost entirely upon the individual tax- 
payers. Senator Abbett had made effective bids for popularity 
by demanding the passage of an act that should tax the railroad 
and the citizen alike, and the combination of the railroads in 
behalf of a Republican candidate pointed him out as the logical 
candidate to lead a Democratic fight against these overgrown 
monopolies, with equal taxation for the battle cry. 

But Mr. Abbett had become singularly indifferent about 
public affairs, and he could not be persuaded to arouse himself 
from his apathy. If Mrs. Abbett's ambition had spurred him 
to the struggle he had made for the Governorship in 1877, her 
death since that memorable convention had robbed him of his 
inspiration. Such was the strength of the public sentiment that 
favored him, however, that there was yet a possibility that his 
name would be put at the head of the ticket in spite of himself, 
and those who were ambitious for the nomination themselves 
persuaded him, while the canvass was in its formative state, to 
publish a formal letter of declination. At the time he penned 
it he had no suspicion that his arch enemy, ex- Congressman 
Orestes Cleveland, would step into the shoes he had just cast 
aside. Mr. Cleveland, however, skillfully nursed the notion that, 
as the issue was of Hudson origin, it was right that a Hudson matt 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 167 

should stand for it, and, the moment Abbett stepped out, stepped 
in himself as Hudson's candidate before the convention. 

It was at first suspected that his candidacy was born of the 
idea that Abbett would yet step forward for the favor of the 
Hudson delegation, and that his sole purpose was to weaken 
Abbett in convention by dividing his own county's strength 
with him. Ex-Senator Abbett was of those who accepted this 
explanation, and as he had no idea of being a candidate he paid 
little attention to the rumors that connected his neighbor's name 
with the nomination. 

When the time for the selection of the delegates to the State 
Convention arrived, however, Cleveland spent money lavishly 
at the polls all over the State, and Mr. Abbett's friends opened 
their eyes to the fact that he was in earnest quest of the con- 
vention's favor. Mr. Cleveland had let no grass grow under 
his feet, and a large majority of the men chosen to sit in the 
convention were committed to his support. 

Mr. Cleveland started in with the idea that their fear of 
Abbett's possible nomination would drive the State House man- 
agers to his aid. He was thunderstruck when he learned that, 
because of the bitterness born of his opposition to Bedle in the 
Parker convention, they refused to entertain any proposition 
from him. Randolph was weakly inclined to him, but Secretary 
Kelsey was bitterly against him, and finally took Randolph with 
him. Undeterred, however, Mr. Cleveland decided to make his 
fight. 

The time fixed for the assembling of the delegates was Sep- 
tember 1st. Excited politicians poured into Trenton from all 
parts of the State the night before. It had become noised abroad 
that the State House regime had decided to defeat Cleveland at 
whatever outlay, but with whom no one was able to guess. 
They found a strong ally, for the nonce, in Allan L. McDer- 
mott, then a fresh-faced young Jersey City lawyer, but since one 
of the foremost of Democratic leaders. The son of poet Hugh 
F. McDermott, he had been typesetter, reporter and law student. 
Fate threw him across Leon Abbett's path, and, with his intui- 
tive knowledge of men, Abbett realized the moment he met him 



168 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

that he was a young man of exceptional individuality and force. 
He took him into his law office, and it was on his certificate that 
Mr. McDermott was admitted to the bar. All through Mr. 
Abbett's life he was his most devoted, as he was his most able, 
lieutenant, and any thrust at his patron was sure to bring Mr. 
McDermott to the front as his champion. The possibility of 
Mr. Cleveland's nomination by this convention of 1880 excited 
McDermott only less than it did Abbett himself, and in the 
hope of foiling him he had taken it upon himself to solicit Joel 
Parker to stand for the nomination, but the old veteran earn- 
estly begged to be excused from assuming the burdens of the 
Governorship again. 

Andrew Albright, a Newark manufacturer with a vaulting 
ambition, tried to argue Mr. McDermott into aiding him when 
Joel Parker refused. At the recent annual fair of the State 
Agricultural Society he had been permitted to hold an umbrella 
over Abbett's head to shield him from the heat of the sun, in front 
of the President's tent on the grounds at Waverly, and, as people 
naturally asked who he was, he felt that he had got sufficiently 
into politics to entertain the idea of being a Governor. Neither 
Abbett nor McDermott could be induced to share the notion 
with him, and he relied upon John Seymour, a well-known 
Newark Democrat, to conduct his canvass for him, while 
they sought more promising alliances for Mr. Cleveland's 
overthrow. 

It was visible to the most casual observer on the eve of the 
convention that Mr. Cleveland was easily the master of the 
situation, and the batteries of all the smaller forces were turned 
upon him. He was bitterly attacked, and his public record torn 
to pieces. The hotel desks were littered with circulars exploiting 
the Boulevard scheme on account of which he had raised his 
hand against Bedle, and laying bare the details of the more 
recent attempt to force the county into the purchase of a piece 
of his estate as a site for a new court house — a transaction that 
was covered with jobbery from beginning to end. And alto- 
gether the fight against him was as acrimonious and as uncom- 
promising as it was possible for it to be. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 169 

While the contending forces were negotiating for delegations, 
and the lobbies were filled with log-rolling and button-holing 
crowds, all working and pulling and hauling for their own 
favorites, the State Committee was called together in the Trenton 
House to select a Chairman for the morning's convention. The 
State Committee was wholly in control of the State House 
coterie, and the crowds that hung around the door of the room 
in which it met were surprised to see Leon Abbett admitted 
to its secret conference. If there was a man in the State against 
whom everybody would have expected to see the doors closed it 
was he ; and the throngs around the hotel spent the evening in 
efforts to guess what his welcome by these old-time antagonists 
of his could mean. At midnight they were treated to a new 
sensation in the announcement that he had been chosen to preside 
over Mr. Cleveland's convention. Only those who had seen 
Mr. Abbett dominate and overpower and bulldoze the Demo- 
cratic conventions in Hudson from the chairman's desk were 
able to realize what an awful obstruction the State Committee 
had thrown in the way of Mr. Cleveland's success. 

Mr. Abbett had gone to Trenton that night to even up scores 
with Mr. Cleveland. He had not forgotten the spectacular 
defeat which the Hudson Congressman had arranged for him in 
1877, and he had actually gone down on his knees to his 
old enemies of the State House Ring to crave the oppor- 
tunity to put his heel on Mr. Cleveland's neck from the plat- 
form of Taylor Hall. Mr. Kelsey and the rest were disposed 
to mistrust him. They suspected that it was only a scheme of 
his to secure his own nomination, and they made him vow that 
if it were tendered to him he would peremptorily decline it. 
Assured, when he had given them these pledges, that revenge 
rather than ambition had sent him to their conference, they 
brought Senator Ludlow into the room and confided to him 
their purpose of making him the candidate. 

Ludlow had not, however, been the first choice of all of the 
big factors among the State House coterie. During the summer 
preceding the convention, Secretary of State Kelsey, Clerk in 
Chancery Little, ex-Governor Bedle, ex-Congressman Alvah A. 



170 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



Clark and ex-United States Senator John P. Stockton, meeting 
casually at Saratoga, had discussed the gubernatorial situation, 
and, with the exception of Little, were rather disposed to look 
upon Ludlow as the most available of the willing candidates. 
Mr. Ludlow was a stout gentleman, of severe dignity, with 
massive face and Websterian brow, who had represented Mid- 
dlesex county in the State Senate with unusual acceptability, 

and he was regarded 
as one whose record 
would commend 
him to the suffrag- 
ists of the State. To 
the surprise of all 
the conferees, Mr. 
Little swooped 
down on Ludlow, 
when his name was 
proposed, like a 
thousand of brick. 
Mr. Little had a 
personal grievance 
against him. While 
in the Senate, Lud- 
low had voted for 
an act that made it 
impossible for Mr. 
Little to collect 
from the lawyers of 
the State, whom he 
had trusted for 
Chancery fees,about 
$30,000 of out- 
standing accounts. 
Ludlow was, therefore, the last man in the State to whose ad- 
vancement the tall Chancery Clerk was willing to lend a willing 
ear. His colleagues had set their hearts upon him, however, 
and they spent the rest of the time, right up to the hour of this 




Orestes Cleveland. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 171 



meeting of the State Committee, in bringing him to their way 
of thinking. He finally yielded, and when Mr. Ludlow was 
led into the State Committee room, to be hailed as the party's 
nominee of the morrow, he had become the undivided choice of 
all the State House crowd. Enemy of theirs, as he was, Senator 
Abbett received him as graciously as they, and pledged his best 
efforts to carry him triumphantly through the convention. 

Mr. Cleveland was discomfited for a moment when he heard^ 
that Mr. Abbett was to preside over the convention, but he 
knew that he had secured a vast majority of the delegates, and 
he declared with confident emphasis, that Abbett nor anyone 
else could stand in his way. 

When Chairman Shippen, of the State Committee, called for 
order in Taylor Opera House, at noon the next day, there was 
a band in the gallery ; Kelsey and Little were smiling radiantly 
in one of the private boxes off the proscenium, and Abbett, with 
jaws of iron, stood in the flies awaiting the call to the slaughter 
of the day. Mr. Shippen had hardly announced him as the 
State Committee's choice for temporary Chairman, before great 
big George Thompson set up a hoarse shout for "three cheers 
for Leon Abbett ! " and the Hudson Senator received a noisy 
ovation as he stepped to the front. Even before he had com- 
pleted his pretty little speech of thanks, the Essex delegates set 
up a shout from one of the upper galleries that their seats had 
been occupied by strangers. Mr. Abbett remembered what the 
claquers and tooters had done for him in the McClellan conven- 
vention, and he suspected that Mr. Cleveland had arranged to 
employ the same agency of enthusiasm again to advance his 
own cause. 

"So long as I am Chairman of this convention," he shouted, 
slamming his cane down on the table, " delegates alone shall 
have seats." 

While the noisy tussle between the delegates and the intruders 
was going on, Walter W. Acton, of Salem, and George R. Gray, 
of Essex, were made the temporary Secretaries. The morning 
hour was spent in the usual preliminaries, and after dinner, 
when the delegates re-assembled for one of the noisiest con- 



172 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

ventions ever held in the State, it was announced that Mr. 
Abbett would serve as permanent Chairman through to the 
end and that the two temporary Secretaries would stay at their 
desks. 

Almost immediately the delegates broke into tumult over the 
enforcement of the unit rule. It was said that Mr. Cleveland 
had but a majority of the votes of some of the county delega- 
tions and that the enforcement of a rule requiring each county 
to vote as a unit was necessary to his triumph. The majority of 
the delegation from Hudson favored his candidacy, but there 
were some who were against him — a mere handful, whose voices 
could not be heard in convention if the preference of the ma- 
jority was to be announced as the preference of all. Colonel 
John I. McAnerny, a smooth-tongued member of the delegation, 
had taken it upon himself to espouse the nomination of ex- 
Congressman A. A. Hardenbergh, who, personally, was probably 
one of the most popular men Hudson county ever knew; and, so 
that Hardenbergh's name might be presented to the convention 
by his friends in the delegation, the Colonel made war on the 
unit rule and insisted that the vote of each delegate be separately 
tallied. Allan L. McDerraott was not slow to see the advantage 
of making a split in Cleveland's home delegation, and he lent 
his voice to Colonel McAnerny's assistance and even brought 
the matter to the notice of the open convention. Mr. Cleve- 
land's managers saw that if McDermott prevailed the Cleveland 
cause would lose many votes in many counties, and, of course, 
they made a bitter fight against him. 

Chairman Abbett was not going to lose the advantage offered 
by McDermott's contention, and, amid a howl of protests, he 
declared that the preference of each delegate should be tallied, 
and when the angry Cleveland men attempted to appeal from 
his decision, refused to entertain it. Bedlam broke loose in the 
Hudson gallery, and the Cleveland contingent on the floor 
answered with a sympathetic tumult ; but Abbett stood proof 
against all of their raging, and at one time, to emphasize the 
rule of individual action, held the whole shouting hall at bay 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 173 

for ten minutes while he pulled a single Ludlow vote from the 
gallery. 

One wave of excitement succeeded another till at last the con- 
vention reached the point of presenting the names of the can- 
didates. Atlantic led oif with that of Andrew Albright. Ber- 
gen wheeled into line for Hardenbergh, who had first seen the 
light of day on her soil. Hudson named Cleveland, Stockton, . 
William W. Shippen, the President of the Hoboken Land and 
Improvement Co., and Abbett. Edward F. McDonald made 
the formal presentation of Cleveland's name on her behalf, and 
Colonel McAnerny put Hardenbergh before the delegates. Hun- 
terdon cast her votes for John T. Bird. Middlesex, through 
Delegate Paterson, declared for Ludlow, and Morris, through 
Holloway W. Hunt, for Cutler. McDermott drew mingled 
hisses and applause by making a fiery protest on behalf, as he 
said, of the Hudson county taxpayers against Cleveland's nomi- 
nation, and his speech was so rasping and bitter that Joseph L. 
Naar, editor of the Trenton " True American," who was a dele- 
gate from Mercer, made the point of order that the business in 
hand was the nomination, and not the defamation, of candidates. 
McDermott rode roughshod over him, and went on as though 
he had not spoken till he put John P. Stockton — " a pure 
man, pure as God Almighty created the soul of an infant " — in 
nomination. 

No words can begin to describe the tumult that had been 
ceaselessly kept up through all these proceedings. Dozens of 
men were shouting like madmen all over the hall, and the crowd 
would respond with alternate hisses and cheers at every point 
they made. The clamor reached its height when William 
McAdoo, probably the most magnetic orator there was in the 
Hudson delegation, sprang to a bench to say that the only way to 
end the uproar was to put Leon Abbett in nomination ; whereat 
big George Thompson started down the aisle, swinging his cane 
over his head and shouting for cheers for Abbett till he was at 
the foot of the platform. Delegates streamed from the benches 
in his wake, th« galleries were half emptied, and a thousand 
shouting and roaring men stormed the platform. 



.174 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

"Abbett! Abbett! give us Abbett!" they cried till the 
perspiration rolled down their faces. But he stood like a statue 
of marble before them. There was a cold glare in his eye, and 
his jaw was set with a fierce determination. He waited, in the 
hope that the clamor would subside so that he could be heard. 
The roaring delegates divined what he had to say, and as often 
as he moved his lips drowned his voice in a fresh tumult. He 
hammered the desk in vain for order, and convinced, finally, 
that even his stentorian voice could not make his words heard, 
answered their mad yells in pantomime. When the throng saw 
him shake his head " no," they broke into a fresh uproar. He 
waved them off with his hand, and appealed by a motion for 
silence. 

" You must listen to me," he finally managed to say. " To 
say that I am insensible to this demonstration would be to say 
what is not true. But I cannot stand as a candidate and be an 
honorable man after my letter of declination and while I am 
acting here as Chairman of this convention." 

" Resign, then ! " the crowd chorused back, while Abbett 
went on to say that, for one, he would battle night and day for 
the nominee of this convention. 

" But," he concluded, in a voice that now rang through the 
ball, " I cannot be that nominee." 

The completion of the roll-call proceeded amid indescribable 
confusion. Delegates all over the hall, armed with pencil and 
paper, kept tallies of the votes as they were announced. These 
showed that two-thirds of all the ballots had been cast for 
Cleveland, and a fresh tempest of cheers came from his friends 
on the floor. Nothing now remained but to make formal an- 
nouncement of Mr. Cleveland's nomination, but Abbett had 
.gone to the chair for the single purpose of seeing that that an- 
nouncement was not made, and he met the angry demands of 
the Cleveland henchmen for it with freezing silence. 

"Announce the result ! announce the result ! " 

The call leaped from pit to balcony, and from the balcony to 
-the rafters under the roof, but still as impassive as a figure of iron 
stood the Chairman, with hands folded before him, and a stare of 



I 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 175 

resolute unconcern in his eyes. The vast throng became deliri- 
ous with excitement. 

" Have the Secretaries figured up the result? " he asked, in a 
hard, metallic voice, when there was a lull, as he turned his face 
to the table where the scribes of the convention sat. Only those 
immediately around him on the platform heard one of the record- 
keepers respond with a " yes." The Chairman summoned his 
iron nerve as he turned to contort the information into the an- 
nouncement that "the Secretaries have found an error in the 
tally." A chorus of protesting and derisive " Oh's ! " greeted 
him, and another awful din followed. But the Chairman was 
firm, and insisted that another ballot should be taken. 

Then, amid the wildest of tumults, Allan McDermott sprang 
to his feet to move that Abbett's declination be disregarded, 
and that the convention proceed to nominate him anyway. 
George Thompson swung his cane over his head down the aisle 
again, and for the second time hundreds of frenzied men were 
at Abbett's feet, praying him to consent. In other parts of 
the hall the Cleveland claquers set up a counter din for 
the announcement of Cleveland's nomination. Men leaped to 
their benches to shout protests, and others to drown their 
shouts. The bedlam that surrounded them made their ravings 
voiceless, and they seemed like mimic orators. Scores shook 
their clenched fists above the heads around them against un- 
seen antagonists in pantomime delirium. Only the awful roar 
of a thousand discordant voices, with no sound articulate — 
like the roar of a tempest-swept sea — filled the hall. And 
still the imperturbed Chairman looked on with a chilly counte- 
nance, nor moved a muscle to quell the riot. He knew that the 
indignant and angry crowd, the jostling and yelling crowd, the 
hustling and pulling and hauling crowd, must tire in the pur- 
suit of their phantom candidate, and that allowed to run the 
race unobstructed they must sooner or later come to a panting 
halt. 

And so it was. Stout lungs grew weak and weaker; stal- 
wart arms, that had sawed the air with frenzied energy, fell 
limp; the host at his feet gasped for breath; their fury and 



176 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

enthusiasm had spent themselves by degrees. And with the 
lull came his voice declaring for the second time that he could 
not be a candidate and that the ballot must be taken again. 

Through four ballots this scene was repeated. The conven- 
tion lost its head for the third time, while he drove back another 
Cleveland wave, and clustered around the platform with noisy 
demands that he become the candidate. On the fourth ballot 
one of the delegations broke to Ludlow. The Cleveland retainers 
in the Hudson delegation had spent all their energies to over- 
come the iron will of the Chairman, and they saw that their 
efforts were to be in vain. In very despair they surrendered to 
him, and when the Chairman announced that Cleveland's own 
county cast one hundred and twenty-five of her one hundred 
and seventy votes for the Middlesex Senator, Mr. Cleveland's 
friends all over the hall accepted it as the inglorious end of 
their battle, and the delegations from all the counties struggled 
for the first opportunity to consummate Ludlow's nomination. 
With an air of triumph, Mr. Abbett finally announced that the 
tally of the clerks showed a vast majority for Ludlow, and 
declared him to be the nominee of the Democratic party for 
Governor of New Jersey. Some of the implacables in the 
Essex delegation refused to accept the decision, and met the 
usual motion that the nomination be made unanimous with 
hisses, and cheers for Frederic A. Potts. 

The excitements that marked the progress of the campaign 
were as great as those that had attended its opening. It was 
singularly complicated on both sides by corporation surround- 
ings, while the anti-monopoly sentiment was gathering strength 
at every meeting. Mr. Potts was recognized as the product of 
a railroad alliance for the control of the State. That Ludlow 
himself was private counsel of the Pennsylvania Railroad in 
New Brunswick was not as generally known, but iihe belief that 
the nomination of one of its own attorneys would make the 
Pennsylvania Railroad folks lukewarm in their support of 
Potts was doubtless the secret inspiration of the movement that 
forced him on the Democratic convention. 

The Republican State Committee never made such a battle for 



MODERN BATILES OF TRENTON. 177 



the victory as it made that year. Senator Hobart, of Passaic, was 
its leader, and as the battle progressed he displayed those quali- 
ties of political generalship which later led to his selection as 
the Vice Chairman of the National Republican Committee and 
the practical director of one of the most exciting of subsequent 
national campaigns. He had every district in the State can- 
vassed and the preference of every voter as between the two 
candidates carefully ascertained. The results of these canvasses 
were listed fully, and on the eve of the decisive engagement 
Mr. Hobart and his colleagues knew just how many in each> 
district and in each county could be depended upon to vote for 
Potts, how many for Ludlow, and who were doubtful. Each^ 
one of the doubtful men was personally solicited at his home by 
an agent of the committee, and the weak-kneed and independent 
Democrats were put under pressure. The Committee discovered 
that the anti- monopoly sentiment which was manifesting itself 
so vigorously in Jersey City, was operating more or less against 
its candidate in all parts of the State, but its method of urging 
the voters was so close and far-reaching that this objection to 
him was largely overcome. And a night or two before election 
the members of the Committee were more than jubilant over the 
anticipated certainty of making Mr. Potts Governor of the 
State. In these calculations the assumption was that the various 
railroad corporations would put their employes under pressure 
to cast their ballots for Potts, whatever their political or per- 
sonal predilections might have been. And the Committee-men 
were consequently thrown into a state of alarm when, on the 
afternoon preceding election day, they learned that Secretary of 
State Henry C. Kelsey had just come away from a long confer- 
ence with Andrew J. Cassatt, at the Pennsylvania Railroad offices 
in Philadelphia, smiling all over his face. The particular sig- 
nificance of this incident lay in the fact that Mr. Kelsey was 
the man who had been chiefly responsible for Senator Ludlow's 
nomination, and that Mr. Cassatt was the working factor among, 
the officials of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. 

Those who were in position to observe the drift of the can- 
vass on election day thought that they saw signs that. the cam-^ 

12 



178 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

paign had resolved itself into a contest for the supremacy 
between the two rival railroad corporations of the State, and 
that the Pennsylvania Railroad had rather repented of its bar- 
gain to aid one of the chiefs of the Jersey Central to a potential 
State office and was at last disposed to assist its own attorney 
to the place. Some gentlemen there are who say that an order 
was given along the line of the Jersey Central for all its men in 
Ocean county, at least, to vote for Potts and for Rufus Blodgett, 
the Superintendent of the Jersey Southern Railroad, one of its 
branches, who stood there in that campaign as the Democractic 
candidate for State Senator. The same reliable authority asserts 
that soon after Mr. Kelsey left Mr. Cassatt's office, an order was 
sent out from the Philadelphia headquarters of the Pennsylva- 
nia Railroad, directing all the employes of the company to cast 
their ballots for Mr. Ludlow. It was said, indeed, after the 
campaign was finished, that a Pennsylvania Railroad engineer 
who had defied the order and voted for Potts, was unseated 
from his locomotive. 

The two State Committees had wires run into their headquar- 
ters rooms at Taylor's Hotel, in Jersey City, for the transmis- 
sion of the returns; and the figures, as they came pouring in 
from all over the State, on election night, were watched, com- 
pared and tabulated with feverish interest by hundreds of par- 
tisans. It was a close race between the two candidates, with 
Potts now a few votes ahead, and now Ludlow a bit in the lead ; 
and at two o'clock in the morning the result was so uncertain 
that each of the State Committees claimed that the returns from 
the few precincts yet to be heard from would give its man the 
victory. Some of these lagging precincts were in Middlesex 
county; and the famous Horse- shoe Democratic district, in Jersey 
City, also seemed to be purposely holding its returns back. At 
five o'clock in the morning the figures from two or three of the 
, precincts were still inaccessible, and the tide- watchers were forced 
i *o go to their rest without knowing which side had won. 

At noon the next day the last of the ballot-boxes was placed 
in official custody, and on the face of all the figures, Senator 
Ijudlow had a majority of 25L The official count of the vote 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 179 

increased this majority to 651. That was the closest shave the 
Democratic party had ever had in the State. 

Suspicions were very generally entertained among the Repub- 
lican workers that the tide of the battle had been turned by 
fraud, and, as usual when fraud was suspected, the Horse-shoe 
district was put under surveillance. Singularly enough, a 
heated controversy, involving the integrity of the vote there, 
sprang up between Patrick Sheeran and Terrence J. McDonald, 
who had run for Assembly in the district. The district was 
so overwhelmingly Democratic that no Republican ever thought 
it worth the while to fight for it, and both of these candidates 
were Democrats. The local Board of Canvassers awarded the 
certificate of election to McDonald, and Sheeran proposed to 
ask the court for a recount of the vote. The fear that some 
irregularities affecting the gubernatorial vote might be revealed 
by a re-opening of the boxes for a recount of the Assembly 
vote, led the Democratic leaders of the State to use their influ- 
ence with Mr. Sheeran to abstain from the contest, and it was 
never undertaken. The incident led to a conference among Mr. 
Potts' friends ; and ex-Secretary George M. Robeson, Committee 
Secretary John Y. Foster and Chairman Hobart were a unit in 
advising him to commence a contest before the Senate against 
Ludlow's occupation of the office. Mr. Potts was a singularly 
sensitive and modest man, and he shrank from the ordeal. He 
always believed, however, that the Pennsylvania Railroad lead- 
ers in the State went back on the engagements that had tempted 
him to accept the nomination, and for weeks after the election a 
warm newspaper controversy was waged on the point. It was 
answered for the railroad that the vote in the counties through 
which the Pennsylvania railroad runs indicated that they were 
not behind the other counties in their fealty to the Republican 
candidate. In Burlington, Potts ran 33 ahead of his ticket; 
in Camden, 59 ; in Essex, 347 ; in Hudson, 450 ; in Hunterdon, 
269 ; while in the Central Railroad county of Monmouth he was 
49 behind, and in Ocean, 34. 



I 



CHAPTER XV. 

Which Contains Some Startling Figures Concerning Railroai> 

Exemptions, and shows how General Sewell's Election 

to the United States Senate may have had 

SOME Relation to the Movement 

FOR Equal Taxation. 



^, IjjJ^HE election that had so narrowly escaped giving the 
^^TJ State a Republicaa Governor, sent to Trenton, in 
^j? r^ January, 1881, a Legislature that was Republican in 
both branches, and the legislative cohorts started in 
hot pursuit of Mr. Kelsey for having, at the dawn of victory, 
spoiled their gubernatorial expectations. Mr. Kelsey 's term as 
Secretary of State was on the point of expiring and the Senate 
held his renomination, which was submitted by Governor Lud- 
low, in the Judiciary Committee for weeks and then rejected it. 
The Governor abstained from submitting a new name, and, after 
the Legislature had gone home for the year, he re-appointed 
Mr. Kelsey ad interim, and the next Senate confirmed him for 
a new full term. 

Senator Garret A. Hobart, of Paterson, having won his spurs 
in the campaign, was chosen by acclaim to preside over the 
Senate during the session, and Harrison Van Duyne, of Essex, 
was promoted to the Speakership of the Assembly. The notable 
event of the session was the displacement of United States 
Senator Randolph by a Republican successor. A half score of 
ambitious Republicans had been tempted to list themselves as 
candidates for the distinction which Mr. Randolph was to lay 
aside on the 4th of March, but General William J. Sewell, 
then serving the county of Camden in the State Senate, easily 
had the call over them all. 

Senator Gardner, of Atlantic, presided over the Republicans- 
(180) 




William J. Sewell. 



182 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of the two Houses when they met in a joint caucus in the 
Assembly Chamber to select the candidate they were to promote 
at the joint meeting to be held a day or two later. On the first 
ballot General Sewell had thirteen votes ; ex-Secretary Robeson, 
eleven; ex- Congressman George A. Halsey, ten; Cortlandt 
Parker, of Newark, seven ; ex-United States Consul Thomas 
H. Dudley, of Camden, five, and ex~ Senator Frelinghuysen, 
three. On the tenth ballot Sewell commanded twenty- five votes 
to Robeson's twelve, Halsey's ten and Parker's two, and was 
declared the nominee of the caucus. Two days later he was 
chosen by each House, acting separately, and Governor Ludlow 
issued his commission to him. He retained his seat in the State 
Senate, as " the gentleman from Camden," till the eve of the 
day in March when it was necessary that he should go to 
Washington to be sworn in. 

General Sewell had for years been a power in the State Senate. 
He held an admitted connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company in its higher administrative departments, but his own 
personal qualities reinforced the influence which this connection 
could not but bring to him. He had never set himself up as an 
orator and he never indulged in set speeches. He had a faculty, 
however, of compressing the thought for columns of rhetoric in 
a few sententious remarks, and, expressing it admirably, often 
turned the drift of debate by the things he found it possible to 
say from his seat within the compass of five minutes' time — as 
when his ten-word argument that the newspapers were part of 
the educational system of the State defeated a threatened move- 
ment for the discontinuance of the publication of the session laws 
in the public prints. A certain hauteur of manner won him the 
reputation, among the superficial, of being proud and self-satis- 
fied and overbearing, but one soon came to learn that it was due 
wholly to his reserve, and among those whom he favored with 
a close acquaintance he was recognized as a hearty and genial 
companion, quite as ready to give as to receive, whose open- 
handed liberality to his friends had once almost wrecked his 
fortunes, and one in whom the sense of gratitude was not always 
measured by the expectation of favors to come. It was easy to 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 183 

see, as he marched to his seat, that he had been a soldier, and he 
had, indeed, won his title as the reward of an active participa- 
tion in the thick of the fight in the days that tried men's souls.. 

It was with pardonable pride that he said to his fellow- Sena- 
tors, who suspended business to bid him an impressive God-speed 
when he laid down his functions in the State Senate, on the eve 
of the 4th of March, to take his seat in the greater Senate at 
Washington, that by his election to the Senate he had achieved 
the highest political honor within the reach of any foreigner. 
The Presidency of the Nation alone was higher, and, native of 
Ireland as he was, he was barred from even aspiring to that 
distinction. He had not been long among the statesmen wha 
control the affairs of the nation in the great spreading building 
of white marble on the brow of Capitol Hill, before his force 
was recognized, and in the parceling out of the respoEsible com- 
mittee places he was treated with a consideration that might: 
have made the blood of older Senators tingle with pride. Even^ 
after a turn in politics had sent a Democrat to succeed him at 
the end of his term, he was still the chosen companion of the 
leading men of the land, and during President Harrison's 
administration no public man exerted a more direct influence 
upon administration policies and affiirs. 

In spite of his admirable personal qualities, the choice of 
General Sewell by the Republican Legislature, following upon 
a campaign in which the railroads had If agued themselves to give 
the State a railroad Governor, was not without its influences on 
Legislative elections in the fall (1881) that followed. Both 
were incidents that favored the popular opposition to the con- 
tinued domination of the corporations. The particular point of 
attack was the relation of the corporations to municipal taxing 
problems. They not only paid no local taxes, but by absorbing 
into exempted properties large areas of ground for railroad pur- 
poses, they reduced the total valuations upon which taxes could 
be assessed, and so enlarged the tax bills of the individual 
property-holders. 

Speaking for Jersey City, upon a pending equal taxation bill, 
in the Legislature of 1882, Assemblyman George H. Farrier 



184 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

gave his colleagues a startling exposition of the size and extent 
of these exemptions in Jersey City alone. 

" These giant railroad corporations," he said, " almost, but yet 
not quite, beyond State control, are eating up our substance and 
threaten annihilation. Every year more property is taken and 
disappears from our tax list. Large tracts of lands and whole 
blocks of houses are sometimes taken, and we have already lost 
more than one-third of our city. Property to the value of hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars is drawn into this great corpora- 
tion maelstrom, only to leave the burden of taxation so much 
greater on what is left. So enormous is this constant depletion, 
that the value of property annually taken from our assessment 
rolls is quite equal to the growth of manufactures and the capi- 
tal invested in new buildings. The aggregate of railroad prop- 
erty exempt from city tax, as returned in the sworn statements 
of the Assessors to the Board of Finance and Taxation, is $19,- 
394,546 ! The amount of railroad property in Jersey City now 
exempt from municipal taxation exceeds the entire valuation of 
either of twelve of the twenty-one counties in the State, as re- 
turned to the Comptroller for the year 188L It is $177,000 
more than the value of the county of Camden, real and per- 
sonal ! It is $3,000,000 greater than the county of Bergen, 
with all its busy towns and farms! It is more by $1,000,000 
Ihan the great county of Middlesex, including the city of New 
Brunswick with all its manufactures ! Greater than Warren, 
and $3,000,000 in excess of Somerset ; fifty per cent, more than 
the value of Cumberland county ; worth almost as much as the 
fine county of Morris, with all its rich mines, valuable iron 
works and thriving villages; almost $6,000,000 more than 
Gloucester, and nearly of the same value a^ Hunterdon, covered 
as it is with fertile farms and generous orchards. And think of 
it, you representatives of the places I name ! the value of rail- 
road property in Jersey City which pays it no tax is about the 
same as that of the four counties of Sussex, Atlantic, Cape May 
and Ocean combined ! And again, the railroad property in our 
city exempted from taxation by you is nearly four times the 
^ value of all the real estate and personal property owned by the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 185 

State, which includes this State House, the Normal School, 
Lunatic Asylums, State Prison and the various properties devoted 
to the uses of the several institutions owned by the State ! " 

In a paper subsequently read before the Kent Club, in Jersey 
City, Mr. Charles L. Corbin, a noted lawyer associated in the 
firm of Collins & Corbin, made an even more notable contribu- 
tion to the an ti- monopoly literature of the period. He called 
attention to the fact that, while New Jersey in population ranked 
as the nineteenth State, it ranked fifth in respect to the magni- 
tude of its public indebtedness and second in the table showing 
the increase of debt since 1870. The States having a greater 
debt rank were— New York, with $218,732,000, the first in 
point of population ; Pennsylvania, with $114,034,000, the sec- 
ond in population ; Massachusetts, with $91,283,000, the seventh 
in population; Missouri, with $57,431,000, the fifth in popula- 
tion. New Jersey stood next, the nineteenth in population, with 
an aggregate local indebtedness of $49,547,000. New York — 
with $59,000,000 increase of debt between 1870 and 1880— 
alone led New Jersey with her $26,692,000 increase. Mr. 
Corbin next noted that the average rate of taxation in the State 
" exceeds two per cent, of a valuation which, as compared with 
that of other States, is high. In the State of New York, ex- 
cluding New York City and Brooklyn, the average rate is less 
than one per cent. In Jersey City the rate of taxation is 2.94 
per cent, at a full valuation, and the debt is not decreasing. In 
New Brunswick the rate is 3.63 per cent. In Camden it is 
2.96 per cent. Newark is reckoned prosperous as compared 
with other New Jersey cities, but its city debt exceeds $8,000,- 
000, and its burden of city and county debt, per capita, exceeds 
that of Brooklyn, which is regarded as a very heavily- burdened 
city. Elizabeth and Rahway are both openly bankrupt. 

" The causes which have produced these effects are, no doubt, 
to a great extent, the same that have operated to produce indebt- 
edness elsewhere throughout the country. But why should New 
Jersey have distinguished itself so greatly in the race toward 
bankruptcy as to have outstripped all competitors ? In particu- 
lar, why should the inciease during the ten years from 1870 to 



186 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

1880 have been so great, exceeding in amount the increase in 
any other State except New York, and, in view of relative popu- 
lation and wealth, greatly exceeding the increase in that State? 
No intelligent resident of New Jersey can doubt that, since the 
year 1873, a rigid economy has been practiced, with trifling ex- 
ceptions, in the various counties and municipalities. Although 
scandalous defalcations have come to light in probably more 
than half the cities in the State, yet, with few exceptions, the 
losses have been made good to the public by the bondsmen of 
the guilty officials, and the crime punished by due legal penal- 
ties. No expensive public works have been carried on. No 
Governor of the State has found the cost of the Capitol a pain- 
ful subject to contemplate in an annual message. There is no 
State canal, no Brooklyn or St. Louis bridge, no Hoosac tunnel, 
no Tweed court-house, to show for all the millions added to the 
debt in the last decade. I believe there is not in all New Jersey 
a city park of ten acres extent. The public wealth has not 
been wasted by a Pittsburg riot or a Philadelphia Centennial 
Exhibition. The people have, on the whole, been more prudent 
and economical than their neighbors in expenditures for public 
purposes. They have been taxed since 1870 to the limit of their 
endurance, in some cases beyond it, and yet the burden continues 
to increase. The State, under such pressure, is not sharing fully 
in the general revival of prosperity, and should another businesa 
revulsion take place the number of bankrupt cities in New Jersey 
would be greatly increaeed. 

" The cause which far more than any other has given New 
Jersey such eminence in the crowd of public debtors, can be 
stated with confidence. More than one-fourth of the property 
of the State is exempt from county and local taxation. That 
exempted property belongs to the railroad companies." 

Proceeding, after making this forcible presentation of figures, 
Mr. Corbin called attention to the fact that the assessed valuation 
of all the property taxed in the State, as stated by the Comp- 
troller's report for 1882, was $535,467,000, and that the cost of 
the railroads and equipments, as returned by the officers of the 
companies for the same year, was SI 67,6 18,000. He then went 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 187 

on to argue that the value of these roads was evidently much 
greater in the light of their net earnings, and that, following 
the method approved by the United States Supreme Court of 
valuing the property of a railroad by calculating the value of all 
its stocks and bonds at the market quotation, the worth of the 
railroad property in New Jersey would not run short of $250,- 
000,000. He quoted statistics to show that the railroads escaped 
the payment, by their exemptions, of $2,000,000 of their portion 
of the public burden — which, of course, must be borne by the 
other property. " In other words," he concludes, " the people 
of New Jersey are paying an annual subsidy of $2,000,000 to 
the owners of the railroad property in the State. A State debt 
of $50,000,000, at four per cent., would be recognized as an 
enormous burden. And yet the annual interest on such a debt 
would be only $2,000,000." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

The Pyrotechnic Cator Comes in Here, and the Picturesque Story 
OF the First Anti-Monopoly Battle is Outlined. 




T ^ T was to be expected that when the size and character 
02^ of the exemptions were thus paraded before the public 
^^ eye the masses would rise in protest, and in Jersey 
City, where miles and miles of property, seized by the 
railroads, had been taken out of the property assessable for the 
maintenance of the municipal government, there was a wide- 
spread anti-monopoly sentiment. Though everywhere prevalent 
throughout the city, it was still somewhat nebulous till Thomas 
V. Cator took it upon himself to crystallize it. 

Mr. Cator was a handsome young New York lawyer, with 
raven hair and brilliant black eyes and olive face, and a wonder- 
fully smooth and persuasive tongue, whose courtship of a young 
heiress of the Traphagen family had attracted him to Jersey 
City. Miss Annie Post, to whom his attentions were paid, was 
herself a woman of culture, with a penchant for political dis- 
cussions and a liking for public affairs, and it was from her en- 
tertaining converse, likely, that Mr. Cator first caught a glimpse 
of a situation calculated to arouse his powers, and saw opportu- 
nities for an agitation that was admirably suited to his views 
and temperament. A lover's desire to be near to the woman of 
his choice was an ample excuse for making his home in Jersey 
City, and he had not been many weeks upon the soil before he 
found himself the center of an admiring throng of self-appointed 
monopoly fighters. With their aid he organized the Hudson 
County Anti-Monopoly League, and, attracted by his eloquence, 
the crowd that gathered at each weekly meeting to listen, if not 
to participate, grew larger and larger, till the organization be- 
(188) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



came a serious menace to railroad domination or railroad any- 
thing else in Jersey City. 

An opportune turn of fortune's fickle wheel threw in his way, 
almost as soon as he had begun the agitation, an opening for 
effective work for the cause he had gone to the city to espouse. 
He had made his home in a part of the city largely settled by/ 
Pennsylvania 
railroad em- 
ployes. If there 
was a corner of 
the city where 
the influence of 
that corporation 
was considered 
supreme, it was 
in this Third 
Assembly D i s - 
trict, and it was 
known all over 
the State, too, as 
about the only 
reliable Repub- 
lican district in 
the Democratic 
town. In spite 
of its large rail- 
road population, 
Mr. Cator went 
into the Repub- 
lican primaries there as a seeker after the nomination for the 
Assembly on an anti-monopoly platform (1881). 

The "regulars" of the district hooted him as a carpet-bagger 
and an adventurer, and pushed Asa W. Dickinson forward in 
his stead. Mr. Dickinson was then a very young man — a mere 
boy of twenty-three or four. He had been the legislative cor- 
respondent of a local newspaper and become a fast friend of 
General Sewell while at Trenton. He had ended his newspaper 




Thomas V. Cator. 



190 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



career in order to go ioto the law, when the solicitations of his 
neighbors tempted him into politics, and he consented to go into 
the primary as a candidate against the brilliant anti-monopolist 
leader. The hall in which the primary was held was packed to 
suffocation, and the balloting proceeded amid great excitement. 
At the end of it Mr. Dickinson had the larger number of votes, 
and, in accordance with usage, was proclaimed as the party's 
nominee. 

The Democra<^8 of the district at once set up the cry that the 

primary had been 
packed in the interest 
of Mr. Dickinson by 
the railroad companies, 
and the surroundings 
pointed out Mr. Cator 
to them as their candi- 
date on an an ti- monop- 
oly platform. The con- 
test riveted the attention 
of politicians all over the 
State. Mr. Dickinson 
tried to escape the handi- 
cap of being regarded 
as a railroad candidate 
by making a personal 
canvass on purely par- 
tisan grounds, and might 
have won his fight had 
he not become enmeshed in the tangles of a collateral local 
complication. 

It happened that Samuel W. Stilsing, one of the well-paid 
Police Justices of Jersey City and a Republican leader in the 
district, was anxious to be re-appointed. His connection with 
his office was to end in the following spring unless the new 
Legislature in joint meeting re-elected him. It was necessary, of 
course, that he should have the support in the approaching 
caucus of the representative from his own district, and he 




Asa \V. Dickinson. 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 191 



solicited Dickinson, as the price of his assistance in reaching the 
seat in the Assembly, to help him to keep his city office. Major 
David A. Peloubet, a rival power in Republican councils in the 
district, also aspired to be a Police Justice. He hoped to be 
Stilsing's successor, and Dickinson had already pledged himself 
to him. He was therefore unable to give any aid to Stilsing, 
and the Judge easily made terms with Cator. Dickinson 
realized that with Stilsing favoring Cator his canvass would 
fail, and he made strenuous efforts to keep him in line with his 
party. One Republican after another waited upon the Judge to 
plead with him to forego his personal ambition for the party's 
sake. But all to no purpose. And then Dickinson's Repub- 
lican friends in other parts of the State began to bombard him 
with imploring letters. Among the others the Judge found in 
his mail one morning was one that made him chuckle all over 
with inward satisfaction. It ran like this : 

"Dear Judge— Mr. Dickinson is the Republican nominee for Assembly in 

your district. Tiie General and myself will remember whatever you may do 

in his behalf. Yours very truly, 

" C. Barcalow." 

" The General " was the new United States Senator and " C. 
Barcalow" was Mr. Culver Barcalow, who has already been 
introduced to the reader as the chief of the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road lobby at Trenton. The community of Jersey City had also 
been forced to make the acquaintance of Mr. Barcalow. Very 
well indeed did they know this sleek and well-dressed little 
gentleman with the drooping eyelid. They had found him in 
their path when they went to Trenton to struggle against corpo- 
rate aggressions. He had proven himself a little too fertile in 
resource and a trifle too familiar with the ropes for those ama- 
teurs in lobby work who flocked to the capital to clamor for 
municipal rights in times of public excitement ; and they had 
good reason to remember him. 

Judge Stilsing knew the secret power for mischief that was 
hidden in the few lines a good genius had placed in his hands, 
and he smiled all over his face as he folded the missive carefully 



192 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

and tucked it away in his pocket. He kept it there till the 
advocates of Dickinson had grown red in the face by the vehe- 
mence with which they were denying the insinuation that Dick- 
inson's candidacy had a railroad streak in it ; and then, a day 
or two before the close of the polls, he slipped up into the 
editorial- room of an opposition newspaper and asked if the in- 
cautious letter might be published. 

" Published ! " was the editor's vehement exclamation. " Pub- 
lished ! Why, our man is elected the moment that letter get& 
into type." 

The district went wild with excitement as it read and re-read 
the tell-tale missive. There never was such an outpouring as 
that of the anti-monopolists to defeat the young man whose 
election " Cul " Barcalow had thus dared to espouse. And when 
the vote was counted on election night, the acclaim of the streets 
and the burning of bonfires bespoke the public joy over the 
anti-monopoly leader's splendid triumph. 

The reader who is interested in sequels may be assured that 
Mr. Cator secured a re-appointment for Justice Stilsing. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

A Certain Mr Shinn, of Atlantic, Comes to the Front here with 

SOME New, Crisp Money that had been Paid Him for His 

Vote on the "Water-Fkont Grab Bill," and 

MAKES AN Enormous Sensation with it. 




i 



iWHE Legislature of 1882, born of these excitements, wm 
divided between the two parties. The House was^ 
largely in control of the Democrats, and there were 
enough Republicans in the Senate to re-elect Senator 
Hobart to the Presidency. The House was Democratic, but 
Assemblymen James C. Clark and Dennis McLaughlin, of 
Hudson, and Joseph H. Shinn, of Atlantic, led a revolt in the 
Democratic caucus, and there was a delay of a day or two in the 
choice of the Speaker. The diflPerences were patched up, how- 
ever, and the organization was eventually effected in the Demo- 
cratic interest. 

The rolls had scarcely been called in the two Houses before a 
whole school of railroad bills were rushed to the desks of the 
Secretaries, and the session throughout was one of the most in- 
tensely dramatic that the galleries had looked down upon in 
many years. Two of these bills were of decided interest to the 
great railroad corporations. One, which became famous as 
Senate No. Ill, placed in the hands of a majority of railroad 
directors authority to increase the capital stock of corporations^ 
whether their charters gave them the power or not. It was un- 
derstood to be of Central railroad inspiration and to be designed 
to take the control of that corporation out of the hands of the 
stockholders. The notable feature of its passage was that Cator 
left his sick bed to vote for it, an act that was severely criticised 
by his anti-monopoly friends as an abandonment of the princi- 
ples upon which he had been elected. 

13 (193) 



194 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

In a personal letter to the author of this work, Mr. Cator 
writes thus concerning that vote : 

"Jay Gould and the Reading road had by manipulation got hold of a 
majority of the stock of the New Jersey Central, and were about to put the 
N. J. Central into a syndicate to control the coal supply (an arrangement 
tiimilar to that which Chancellor McGill last year by decree annulled). Just 
«uch an attempt was being made in 1882, and this bill was expected to enable 
the New Jersey people to hold on to the Central and keep it out of such a 
pool, which would raise the price of coal in New Jersey and New York, &c. 
This was told me by men in whom I had confidence — good men, anti-monopoly 
men — and it was true, and it was a fight for New Jersey against outsiders, and 
for the consumers of coal against a contemplated combination of the New 
York and Reading ring. The Governor thought it unconstitutional. I 
believed all questions of that kind should go to the courts for settlement, and 
always took that ground. I refer you to page 15 of my speech on equal tax- 
ation on February 6th, 1883, to show you I always took that position. For 
these reasons I gave my vote for it in good conscience, and not because any- 
one asked it, for my vote was not needed. Aside from this, the bill was good, 
and I would vote for it again. It is always, to my mind, good to call in and 
pay interest-bearing bonded debt overdue by substituting stock, which is an 
obligation not bearing interest or a fixed charge, and this bill provided stock 
could not be sold at less than par." 

The other bill was intended to assist the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road Company in the settlement of some litigation in which the 
company had become involved with Jersey City. After the rail- 
roads had acquired their riparian rights on the Hudson river and 
New York bay water fronts, they enlarged their terminals and 
railroad yards and made new territory for themselves by filling 
in the shallow points on the shore with earth, and then refused 
to permit Jersey City to extend those of its streets which pointed 
toward the shore over these acres of made land, to the water. 
In this way an invisible fence was practically erected along the 
old water-line, and all the new territory that had been made 
beyond it was closed against the public easements. The Board 
of Finance instructed the corporation lawyers of the city to 
bring suit to force the companies to open their gates so that the 
streets that had run down to the water could be extended over 
its property to the new water-line it had established, thus restor- 
ing to the public the access through the streets to the river or 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 195 

bay that it had previously enj )yed ; and Corporation Attorney 
McDermott brought ten or fifteen suits against the Pennsylva- 
uia Railroad and other corporation trespassers upon the public 
easements. To defeat these suits, an act which has gone down into 
history as Senate Bill 167 was presented by one of the Senators. 
Its title declared its purpose to be the "establishment and protec- 
tion of the rights of grantees, lessees and licensees of the State 
from easements on land now or hereafter lying below high-water 
mark on tide-water." And it practically declared that where, 
on property acquired from the Riparian Commissioners, the line 
of the land had been extended farther into the river by filling 
for solid ground, the streets should end at the old river line. 

The bill slid through the Senate undebated and not under- 
stood if it was noticed at all, and it was not till it reached its 
second reading on the Assembly calendar that the magnitude 
of the water-front seizure it proposed was realized. The New 
York " Times " was the first to sound the note of alarm, and 
the New York " Herald " joined in the exposure. Jersey City 
was aroused and the halls of legislation were besieged by her 
citizens. The opposition to the passage of the act was so strong 
that the railroad company found it necessary to send special 
counsel to Trenton to defend it, and Governor Bedle made a 
subtle plea in its behalf before the Committee of the Whole. 
McDermott, who was Assemblyman as well as City Counsel, 
responding to Governor Bedle's argument, happily described 
the bill as one intended to build a Chinese wall around Jersey 
City. A Monmouth editor named Bell, who sat in one of the 
Assembly chairs, met the attacks on the bill with the astounding 
admission that it had been carefully " prepared, discussed and 
considered before introduction," and so furnished Assemblyman 
William McAdoo with the text for one of the most thrillingly 
eloquent speeches against it that had ever been heard on the floor 
of the Chamber. Its other conspicuous defender besides Bell 
was a lawyer named Robertson, representing one of the Essex 
districts. In spite of the charges made upon it by McDermott 
and McAdoo, it passed the Assembly with thirty-eight votes to 
its credit. 



196 MODERN BATTLES OF TEENTON. 

The only hope of defeating it now was that which was based 
upon Governor Ludlow's interference. It was not forgotten 
that before his election he had been one of the attorneys of the 
railroad that was behind the measure and that the all-powerful 
corporation had even given him the great office he held ; but 
during his three years' service in the Senate he had impressed 
the people as a man of stern rectitude, with a Spartan's courage, 
and the people were not without hope, when they appealed to 
him, that he would interpose his veto in their behalf. 

A man of massive head, set squarely on broad shoulders, 
strength marked in every line of his face, and a square jaw that 
bespoke a stubbornness of temperament — one had but to look at 
him to feel that he could not be tempted by any inducement to 
do that which his conscience could not approve. He had made 
up his mind before the bill reached him that he could not 
countenance it, and he was subjected by its promoters to au 
enormous pressure which a man of less stern mould could not 
have resisted. He was cajoled, coaxed and threatened by turns. 
The obligations of fealty to the corporation whose employe he 
had been, whose political beneficiary he was, were thrown in his 
face. Glittering inducements were dangled before him, and 
when he stood like adamant against them all, a threat of 
political extinction which was afterwards relentlessly re- 
deemed, was hurled at him. But neither appeal nor tempta- 
tion nor threat deterred him, and within the limit of time the 
Constitution allowed him he sent to the two Houses a stinging 
veto of the act. 

Its paseage by the Senate over the veto was a foregone con- 
clusion from the start. Applegate, the dark-mustached Senator 
from Monmouth, declared the bill to be one for the protection 
only of the owners of riparian rights. Gardner of Atlantic, 
Vail of Union, Taylor of Essex, spoke in the same strain. 
Paxton, the blonde Senator from Hudson, and the spectacled and 
dyspeptic Youngblood, of Morris, alone raised their voices in 
defense of the veto. And the vote was taken. Applegate, 
Beatty, Bosenbury, Deacon, Doughty, Gardner, Hires, Hobart, 
Lawrence, Martin (who was Ludlow's successor as the Senator 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 197 

from Middlesex), Merritt, Nichols, Taylor, Vail and Worten- 
dyke voted to override the veto ; Ferrell, Havens, Paxton, 
Stainsby and Youngblood comprised all of the little band that 
stood by the Governor, and the bill was rushed across the cor- 
ridor to be re enacted by the Assembly. 

Meanwhile, the act wa? being debated with intense feeling 
outside of the two Chambers. At a mass meeting in Hoboken, 
the fiery McAdoo had said of the men who voted for it that 
they stood before the community as self-confessed and self-con- 
victed scoundrels, and Bell, of Monmouth, with the air and voice 
of a Methodist exhorter, hauled him over the coals for it. The 
Speaker ruled him off his feet, however, with the point that a 
member could not be called to account in the Chamber for words 
spoken outside. 

This same Mr. Bell on the following day moved the passage 
of the act over the Governor's veto. Assemblyman Lawrence 
was in the chair. Cator tried to table the motion, and McAdoo 
to postpone its consideration indefinitely, but without avail. 
Robertson, of Essex, insisted upon its being acted upon, and he 
became quite a figure in the subsequent proceedings because of 
the cool assurance with which he faced the angry throng of 
citizens that crowded the floor and packed the gallery. A thin, 
undersized man, with clean-shaven, pallid face, but clear, cold, 
grey eye, one would have supposed from his appearance that he 
was nervous and dyspeptic, and easily disconcerted. But amid 
all the ensuing excitement, he alone seemed to keep his head. 
He became the foremost advocate of the bill, and stood behind 
it pushing it forward to its goal with a merciless determination. 
He met the efforts of Cator and McAdoo for indefinite post- 
ponement with the point that the House could not escape its 
constitutional duty of considering and disposing of a veto. 
Lawrence declared the point not well taken, and the roll call on 
the motion to take up the veto for consideration proceeded 
without incident till the name of Joseph H. Shinn, of Atlantic, 
was reached. 

Shinn was known as one of the roustabouts of the House. 
He had the air of a barkeeper out for a good time. But he 



198 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

rose from the most inconspicuous of members to be the central 
figure in the greatest of recent legislative battles the moment he 
had secured the recognition of the chair. A paper in his hand, and 
the fingers that held it, trembled so violently, as he read from it, 
that it rattled. It was an affidavitt of his own, in which he 
charged that a certain man, whom he did not know, had 
approached him to vote for the passage of the bill over the veto. 
This as yet unnamed individual had gone at him insidiously. 
He had a mathematical problem to submit to him : "As your 
vote is to Senate 167, so is |500 to your answer." That was 

the problem. Barkeeper 
though he may have seemed, 
Shinn solved it at once, and 
took the solution to McDer- 
mott and McAdoo. They bade 
him encourage the tempter,, 
and he played him along with 
the pretext that the price wa& 
not large enough, and $1,000 
took the place of the $500 in 
a new equation. Shinn pre- 
tended to agree, and while he 
was eating dinner at his hotel 
a day or two later, a waiter 
slid a long envelope under his 
plate. He opened it and un- 

Culver Biirealow. j „ . * i aa U 1 

covered five crisp $100 bank 
notes. They were half of the promised bribe money. 

In corroboration of his affidavit, Shinn fluttered the crisp, 
new bank bills in the eyes of the startled members. The 
chamber was thrown into indescribable uproar. Cator sprang 
to his feet with a motion for a committee of investigation, and 
with Flynn and Gaston of Passaic, Fiedler of Essex, Parrott 
of Union, and Baker of Cumberland, he was instructed to con- 
duct the inquiry. The House was forced to a recess by the 
confusion, and at evening the committee began its work. It sat 
till daylight of the following morning. The identity of Shinn's- 




MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 199 

tempter was discovered in a short, thick- set man, with roving 
coal black eyes, set in a round, swarthy face — John J. Kromer 
by name. The members who had voted for the bill before it 
went to the Governor marched through the witness-box in steady 
procession to make denial that they bad accepted the money 
Shinn had spurned. Audacious little Robertson was obliged to 
confess that he had taken a retainer at his office from an agent 
of the company " for three or four speeches " he had made od 
the Assembly floor in behalf of the bill. Convery, of Middle- 
sex, deposed he had heard " from a Mr. Baker " that there was 
" money in the bill," and Fiedler, of Essex, told how " Cul." 
Barcalow, the legislative agent of the company, had, passing 
him, let fly the observation that it was " worth a thousand " to 
vote for the bill. 

The committee got together, after all had been heard, and 
solemnly resolved that there was no corporation behind Kromer's 
$500, and that as for " Cul " Barcalow's passing remark to 
Fiedler, why it was only one of the exudations of his super- 
abundant jocosity, and the next day it went into the Assembly 
Chamber to present its sapient findings. 

The lugubrious Bell claimed the floor on his motion, sus- 
pended by the excitements of the day before, to take up the 
veto, when Cator asked leave to present the report. It was now 
the last day of March, and the railroad was determined to push 
the bill through over the veto, in spite of all the ecandal it had 
created. Bell, its spokesman since Robertson had discredited 
himself, was unwilling to relinquish his floor privilege. The 
Speaker ruled that the reading of the special report was of the 
highest privilege. Robertson placidly took an appeal from the 
ruling. The hour fixed for the dissolution of the Legislature 
was fast approaching. But a few brief minutes of the session 
remained, and Robertson denounced the effort to put in the 
report as an attempt to kill the bill by consuming in other waya 
the time needed for its passage. Bell made a fruitless effort to 
have the hour for final adjournment changed to midnight. The 
Speaker declared that only the report was in order, and Arthur 
Wilson, the Clerk, began to read it. Robertson and Bell kept 



200 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

their feet, shouting, "Mr. Speaker!" The Clerk raised his 
voice to drown theirs ; they keyed up their demands for recog- 
nition to overcome his; the crowd in the gallery hissed and 
liooted. 

The session's hour glass was now draining off to the last grains. 
The excited throng kept their eyes anxiously upon the gilded 
Roman figures that indicated the minutes on the blue face of the 
'big clock over the folding doors. The long, slim second-hand 
stalked around it with measured tread, like the leg of a golden 
spider, leaping from space to space with a jerky spring — the 
Clerk still reading, the two corporation members still shouting, 
the crowd on the fl jor and in the galleries still hissing and hoot- 
ing — till it stroked off the fateful second fixed for the close of 
legislation. 

The moment it had stalked there, with its searching, hunting 
pace, the Speaker declared the session at an end, and the defeat 
of the bill was accomplished. 

Shinn was in high feather as long as the papers were parading 
his name all over the country and commending him for his 
" manly incorruptibility " and all that kind of thing. But when 
the excitement had subsided, and he ceased to be an object of 
interest to the passing throng, he repented his part in the ex- 
posure. He made himself quite ridiculous by his subsequent 
attempts to recover posseesion of the five crisp bank notes that 
he had so ostentatiously put in evidence for the entertainment 
•of the galleries. The money had gone into the keeping of the 
State, and as there seemed to be no way of covering it into the 
State's accounts, he claimed that he had as good a right to it as 
the Commonwealth had. The plea availed him nothing, of 
course; but it required an act of the Legislature — passed a year 
or two subsequently — to place it with the State's available funds. 



CHAPTER XVIII, 



In Which Senator McPherson Brings a Democratic Bolt to an 
Inglorious Climax and Cator Keeps Up His War- 
fare ON THE EaILROADS. 




HE excitements of the legislative session had charged the 
political atmosphere with an anti- monopoly tremor. 
Jersey City was still clamoring against the exemptions 
of railroad property. She was insistiog upon equal 
taxation with noisy fervor. Assemblyman Farrier had put her 
demand in the form of a bill. It was to urge its passage that 
he delivered the speech from which quotations are made in a 
previous chapter. Cator and his League were growing more 
aggressive and noisy. Charles L. Corbin's address before the 
Kent Club had commanded the attention of the State. The 
narrowness of the escape from the passage of the water-front 
bill — the ready acquiescence with which the Republican Senate 
yielded to all corporation demands — served to give a Democratic 
drift to public sentiment in the campaign of 1882. It was what 
is known among the politicians as an " off year." There was 
no State ticket to be chosen ; the strifes were in the districts — 
for Congressmen and members of the Legislature. That Mr. 
McPherson's term in the United States Senate was to end in the 
following March was a circumstance that gave zest to the legis- 
lative contests. 

The notable outcomes of the congressional controversies were 
the defeat of ex-Secretary Robeson, the Republican nominee in 
the First district, by Assemblyman Thos. M. Ferrell, who had 
grown up in the Gloucester glass factories, and of John L. 
Blake, the Republican nominee in the Newark district, by 
Fiedler, a German bat -seller whom the German brewers had 

(201) 



202 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

backed. Ferrell had interested the labor unions in his canvass^ 
and Robeson's friends alwajs insisted that he had to fight ISewell 
as well as the Democrats. The loss of the strongest Repub- 
lican district in the State by so conspicuous a citizen as the 
ex-Secre<ary made Mr. Robeson's defeat a matter of national 
concern. Not less interesting to the politicians of the State was 
the capture of the Newark district, second only to the Camden 
district in its Republican loyalty, by a Democrat. In the 
legislative contests, the Republicans found it possible to 
retain control of the Senate by a vote of 1 2 to 9, but the Demo- 
crats had a pronounced majority in the House. The carrying 
of Burlington county, always steadfast in its Republicanism, by 
Hezekiah Smith, the Democratic candidate for State Senator 
there, and the defeat of Cooper, the Democratic nominee in one 
of the unfaltering Democratic districts in Monmouth, by Dr. 
Thos. G. Chattle, on a Prohibition platform, were among the 
most notable outcomes of the legislative struggles. 

When the two Houses gathered at Trenton for the work of 
the winter, John J. Gardner, of Atlantic, was made President of 
the Senate, and Wm. A. Stiles, of Sussex, a brilliant writer on 
the editorial staff of the "Tribune," was made Secretary. The 
House Democrats promoted Major Thos. O'Connor, of E^sex, 
to the Speakership, and put Arthur Wilson, of Monmouth, at 
the Clerk's desk. Governor Ludlow, in his annual message, 
put fresh fuel on the anti- monopoly fire by his recommendation 
that a stricter method for the assessment of railroad property be 
devised, and that other corporations, then exempt, be subjected 
to taxation. 

The overtowering topic was the election of Mr. McPherson's 
successor. Mr. McPherson himself was chief among the can- 
didates. The State House Ring liked the idea of his re-election 
as little as it had the idea of his first election, but some of the 
factors in it deemed it prudent to keep in the background. Sec- 
retary of State Kelsey was less aggressive than he had been in 
1877, and it fell to the share of ex-Senator Little to make the 
battle almost alone. The enormous fees that the Secretary of 
State and the Clerk in Chancery had been earning had been 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 203 

lopped off, and both offices were made salaried position", worth 
$6,000 a year. Mr. Kelsey had, in spite of the reduction in the 
emoluments, held on to his place, but Mr. Little had thrown up 
his Chancery Clerkship to succeed Judge Lathrop as Receiver 
of the Jersey Central Railroad Company. Notwithstandirg 
that he was out of office, Mr. Little still exerted great political 
influence, and he threw all of his weight in favor of Chancellor 
Theodore Runyon. Ex-Senator John P. Stockton's name was 
also mentioned, and there were hints that Senator Abbefct might 
be driven to the stake as a dark horse. Abbett had been Mc- 
Pherson's ally, and though Governor Abbett's friends claimed 
that he had thirteen supporters in the Democratic caucus, the 
mention of his name now was merely contingent upon Mr. Mc- 
Pherson's inability to capture the caucus. Stockton was against 
McPherson, but not a very active candidate, and Runyon refused 
to turn a hand over to help himself. The result was that when 
the Democratic members of the two Houses got together to select 
a candidate. Senator McPherson was without effective opposition,, 
and was easily made the choice of the caucus. 

Within an hour after the conference had adjourned, it became 
known that Assemblymen Dennis McLaughlin, Joseph T. Kelly 
and James C. Clark of Hudson, Thomas Flynn of Passaic, 
and William R. Jernee of Middlesex, had decided to bolt tlie 
caucus. The Democrats had only a slim majority on joint bal- 
lot, and the derection of these five statesmen threatened for a 
time to defeat Mr. McPherson's re-election. 

The foremost figure on the Republican side when the legis- 
lative representatives of that party went into caucus to rame 
their candidate against Senator McPherson was ex- Senator Gar- 
ret Augustus Hobart, of Paterson, and their agreement to sup- 
port him for the Senatorship was the natural outcome of ihe 
situation. A native of Monmouth county and a graduate of 
Rutgers College, he had gone to Paterson to study law with 
Socrates Tuttle, a distinguished member of the Passaic county 
bar and graduated into the family of Mr. Tuttle as a son-in- 
law. Miss Jennie Tuttle, a lovely and accomplished lady, who 
ibherited much of the keen intellectuality and pparkling wit for 



'204 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

which her father was widely famed, became the wife of the 
handsome young lawyer. Mr. Hobart's professional, business 
and political career had been one of remarkable success, with 
few parallels among the citizens of New Jersey. This was due 
to natural endowments of ability, energy, generosity and bon 
homme, such as are rarely combined in one individual. He 
had begun his public career as City Counsel of Paterson, in 
1871. A year later he had been made counsel of the Board of 
Freeholders of Passaic county. Elected in the fall of the same 
year to the Assembly from the Third district by the largest ma- 
jority ever given there, he had been elevated to the Speakership 
in 1§74. Declining the exceptional distinction of an election for 
the third term, in 1875, he had, in the following year, in obedience 
to the overwhelming desire of his party, consented to accept the 
nomination for State Senator, and received a majority which ex- 
ceeded that cast for Mr. Hayes for President. He had served 
two terms in the State Senate, and in the sessions of 1881 and 
1882 had been elected its President. 

In the Legislature Mr. Hobart had displayed exceptional 
ability, and had been instrumental in placing upon the statute- 
book some of the most useful of laws. Conspicuous among 
these were the act, already referred to, providing for a summary 
judicial investigation of the affairs of counties upon the appli- 
cation of twenty-five freeholders, and another law charging the 
sinking' fund of the State with the payment of all the interest 
and part of the principal of the State debt yearly, whereby the 
ordinary expenditures of the State were reduced about $100,000 
per annum, which was largely the cause of the removal of the 
State tax, the absence of which is one of New Jersey's proudest 
boasts. 

From the time of his entrance into politics Mr. Hobart had 
easily commanded the foremost position of leadership in his 
party in Passaic county, while both before and after his nomi- 
nation for the United States Senate his capacity for political 
generalshipwas recognized in a much wider field, and in later 
years wa3 in constant demand in the State and National Commit- 
tees of his party. Of the former he was Chairman from 1880 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTOX. 205 

to 1891, and he conducted several of its most brilliant cam- 
paigns. He sat as Delegate and Delegate-at-large in several 
National Conventions. In 1884 he was chosen a member of the 
Republican National Committee, upon the Executive or working 
committee of which he has since continuously served. For a 
number of years he was Vice Chairman of the National Com- 
mittee, and several times declined pressing tenders of its 
Chairmanship. 

He had been as successful in business affairs as in politics, 
and his remarkable ability in organization and executive work 
had led to his aid being sought in the formation and manage- 
ment of perhaps more corporate and private enterprises than 
any other man in New Jersey. With many of these he was still 
connected at the time this page was penned, as president, coun- 
sel, director or in some other capacity. A full list of these 
would almost fill a page of this book. Among the notable 
achievements of Mr. Hobart's business and professional career 
were his discharge of the trusts of receiver of the New Jersey 
Midland Railroad Company, of the Montclair Railway Com- 
pany and the Jersey City and Albany Railroad Company, and 
also of the First National Bank of Newark, in 1880. This 
latter duty was fulfilled with an energy and ability that drew 
from the Comptroller of the Currency the warmest expressions 
of approval, the winding up of the complicated business being 
completed and the depositors paid in full inside of six months. 
Notwithstanding the remarkable pressure of his affairs, he found 
time to indulge artistic tastes of the finest order, which he cul- 
tivated by extensive study and travel. His home, "Carroll 
Hall," in Paterson, was known as well then as it yet is, as a 
model of refined elegance, and the hospitality of its popular 
owner and his amiable and accomplished wife was famed far 
and wide. 

A man of such wide and varied experience was not the one 
to compromise himself with Democratic malcontents, whose 
motives in holding out against their caucus nominee were popu- 
larly believed to be far from the highest, and his refusal to profit 
by their defection destroyed the balance of power which they 




Garret A. Hobart. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 207 

hoped to hold between the two parties. During the night pre- 
ceding the day on which the joint meeting for the choice of the 
United States Senator was to be held, Senator John W. Taylor 
and twenty other Republicans of both branches of the Legisla- 
ture marched in a body into Senator McPherson's room and 
gave him assurances of their readiness to aid him to an election 
if the five bolters still held out in joint meeting. Jernee and 
his fellows in the combine saw that further opposition was use- 
less if the Republicans themselves were going to help elect Mc- 
Pherson, and the combination lost cohesion. 

At noon of the following day the two Houses voted separately 
for the candidates. The Senate gave its vote for Hobart. In 
the House, William Hill, of Essex ; Flynn, of Passaic, and E. 
O. Chapman, Martin Steljes and James C. Clark, of Hudson, 
voted blank. Chairman O'Connor ruled that they must name 
a man, and they all fell in line for McPherson. There being 
thus no concurrence between the two Houses, it was necessary 
for them, in subservience to the constitutional requirement, to 
get together the next day for a joint ballot. Courtesy entitled 
Gardner, as President of the Senate, to act as Chairman during 
the joint meeting, but the Democratic majority refused to con- 
cede the point to him because he was a Republican, and made 
him step aside for Major O'Connor. 

Rumors that Mr. Cator was to make an attack from his chair 
upon Mr. McPherson served to crowd both floor and gallery 
with interested spectators. Chattle, of Monmouth, started the 
ball rolling by putting Mr. McPherson, " of Monmouth Beach," 
in nomination. Senator Youngblood, of Morris, put Mr. 
Hobart's name before the convention. Cator rose from his chair 
behind his desk, and felt the inspiration of a great audience 
when he began the attack he had promised to make. He dis- 
coursed about the power of the corporations in the councils of 
the State, intimated that railroad influences had produced 
McPherson, and ended a brilliant and effective speech by naming 
Governor Ludlow. The vote was taken amid a breathless 
silence. The count of the tally showed 43 of the ballots for 



208 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

McPherson, 36 for Hobart, and 2 — Cator and FJynn — for 
Ludlow. 

All through the session Cator kept up the anti- monopoly 
dance he thus began. The bill with which he prodded the 
railroad corporations was one requiring them to pay taxes the 
same as individuals to the municipalities where their property 
was located, and in a speech urging the passage of the act, he 
called attention to the fact that there was $167,000,000 of rail- 
road property in the State, and that if taxed at full local rate^ 
it would yield $2,000,000 to the local treasuries, instead of the 
$643,000 then paid by them into the State treasury in lieu of 
local taxes. The argument against it was that the $643,000 
was a large part of the State's income, and that if it were taken 
out of the State treasury and given to the localities where the 
railroad property lay, a heavier State tax would have to be 
imposed upon the counties all over for the enrichment, chiefly^ 
of Hudson county, where the valuable terminals of the railroad 
companies were mainly located. The beefy Bryant, of Atlantic, 
who was the chief spokesman for the railroad companies on the 
Assembly floor, tried to amend the bill so as to provide that the 
money should be paid into the State treasury instead of into the 
local treasuries, and appealed to all the members from the rural 
districts to save their constituencies from further taxation by 
voting with him. The appeal fell flat. The amendment was 
lost by a vote of 43 to 16. 

Tuesday, February 6th, was a field-day for Cator and his 
railroad bill. Bryant and Cronk, of Burlington, opposed it 
tooth and nail. Assemblymen Frank O. Cole, of Hudson, made 
an admirable speech in its behalf; Cator scintillated, and 
Gaston of Passaic and Parsons of Essex were heard in advocacy. 
The crowd in the gallery broke into cheers when the bill was 
announced as having passed by a vote of 35 to 23. The affirma- 
tive responses were made by Arbuckle, Armitage, Bolton, Budd^ 
Cator, Chapman, Clarke, Cole, Convery, Flynn, Gaston, Gill, 
Harrigan, Hill, Hutchinson, Jenkins, Kelly, McLaughlin, 
Mills, Murphy, Neighbour, O'Connor, Parsons, Rich, Scott, 
Shannon, Sheldon, Shields, Steljes, Van Bussum, Wanser,. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 209 

Weaver, Woodruflf, Wortendyke and Yourg. Those who voted 
in the negative were Applegate, Bamford, Bryant, Campbel], 
Chattle, Coombs, Cranmer, Cronk, Forman, Freeman, Goodwin, 
Haines, Hoffman, Jernee, Lake, Larrison, Lewis, Ludlum, 
Bobbins, Ross, SmalJey, Stafford and Stoney. 

When the bill reached the Serate Chamber, it collided with 
another that had been introduced by Senator Griggs, of Passaic, 
looking to the same ends but upon different lines. It was not 
many days before Cator's bill was reported by a committee consist- 
ing of John S. Applegate, of Monmouth, and Abram V. Schenck, 
of Middlesex, as unconstitutional, discriminating, ineffectual, 
and liable to impose upon the counties the burden of a larger 
State tax. The adverse report determined its fate. When Mr. 
Griggs' substitute bill was haled out of the committee, it was 
met with the objection that it was a measure for revenue, which 
under the Constitution must originate with the Assembly, and 
that the Senate could not consider it as original legislation. Mr.^ 
Griggs attempted to evade this point by the shrewd contention 
that his bill was merely an amendment to Cator's Assembly 
bill. The plea went for naught, and the Legislature adjourned 
without accomplishing any anti- monopoly legislation whatever. 

14 



CHAPTER XIX. 



Which in its way Pictures the Tireless Fight Leon Abbett Had 

TO Make Against Bitter Enemies to Reach 

the Governorship, in 1883. 




I^OTH the State Conventions, when they assembled to 
select candidates for Governor in the fall of 1883, 
committed the parties in their platforms to the cause 
of equal taxation. The leaning of the State towards 
Democracy, and the rancorous factional disturbance between the 
two wings of the party, aroused the larger interest in the delib- 
erations of the Democratic Convention. The name of Leon 
Abbett was that most frequently heard in the public places. 
Mr. Abbett had been out of the public eye for some years, but 
during his service in the Senate he had proven a giant in the 
debates on the question of railroad taxation, which was now 
absorbing the attention of the people. In the discussions on the 
pending bills, he had dealt with the tax exemptions, which, 
declared by the courts to be in the nature of irrepealable con- 
tracts with the State, had for near half a century kept the tax- 
gatherers of the State at bay. He had attacked them with a 
vigor and directness that marked him out to the public, when it 
came now to seek a new Governor, as one especially adapted to 
the situation. Mr. Abbett had no especial desire for the Gov- 
ernorship itself, but the United States Senatorship, which was to 
be filled at the close of the gubernatorial term, was a glittering 
prize the reach for which could be made from the gubernatorial 
chair. His resourceful genius had pointed out to him, as the 
tax discussions of the last two or three years had progressed, an 
effective method of overthrowing the exemptions, and he was 
(210) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 211 

tempted to yield to the popular desire that he thould take the 
•Governorship because of his confidence that he could lead an 
attack upon the entrenched corporations so brilliant and effective 
that the people would place the Senatorship at his disposal as 
the reward for his services. 

The people had talked for many weeks about dragging him 
from his retirement again before it became known among his 
intimates that he was not averse to the use of his name. Good 
fortune gave him a chance, while public sentiment was crystal- 
lizing, to display his generalship in the very direction in which 
the new Governor would be called upon to go. The New Jersey 
■Central Railroad Company, already described as one of the 
most grasping and arrogant of the non-taxpaying corporations, 
had gone into the hands of ex-Judge Francis S. Lathrop as 
receiver, and had run in arrears to its employes. Refusing all 
offers of retainers, Mr. Abbett took their case into court, and, 
through proceedings that made their wages first liens upon the 
railroad properties, forced their speedy settlement. It was a 
atep that won him the applause of the laboring element as well 
«s of the anti-monopoly element of the State. 

The State House managers disliked and mistrusted him as 
much as ever, but having been twice humiliated by McPherson, 
they were not in as good fighting trim as they had been in the 
past. Mr. liittle was the only one of them who undertook to 
continue the struggle against him. The convention met at 
Trenton, on September 13th, and a day or two before its assem- 
bling, Little went to Freehold in the hope of inducing Joel 
Parker to give Abbett battle in convention. The old war horse 
refused to consent to the use of his name, and Little rushed 
back to Trenton to make a bitter personal attack upon the 
Hudson Senator that was designed to so discredit him as to force 
the convention to nominate someone else. By the time the 
delegates reached the hotel lobbies, Mr. Little was ready to dis- 
tribute among them handfuls of circulars attacking his personal 
and political integrity. The charges made in these circulars 
were that Abbett had been responsible for the Five County act, 
which practically permitted the mortgagor to bargain with the 




Leon Abbett. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 213 

morfgagee for a more than the standard legal rate of interest, 
that he had opposed the six per cent law, that he had voted for 
the Catholic Protectory bill, that he had been indicted for mal- 
feasance by the Mercer County Grand Jury, that he had aided 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company in seizing the water-front 
at Jersey City, and that his general record in the L°gislature 
was that of a venal man. The circular had not half the effect 
that Mr. Little had expected it to have. 

When the convention assembled, Allan L. McDermott was 
made temporary Chairman, but the State House managers scored 
a point against Mr. Abbett by inducing the convention Com- 
mittee on Permanent Organization to substitute George O Van- 
•derbilt, of Mercer, in McDermott's place as permanent Chairman. 
They may have had hopes that Vanderbilt would hold the con- 
vention against Abbett as they had seen Abbett himself hold 
the convention against Cleveland, but Mr. Vanderbilt was too 
weak a man to answer the demands of such an emergency, and 
he was unequal to the occasion. It fell to Mr. McAdoo, of 
Hudson, to present Mr. Abbett's name to the delegates, and he 
made Mr. Little's circulars the object of caustic criticism. 

The other names put before the convention were those of 
Charles E. Hendrickson, of Burlington ; Jonathan Whitaker, 
of Cape May ; Theodore Runyon and Andrew Albright, of 
Essex; Augustus A. Hardenbergh, of Hudson; Augustus W. 
Cutler, of Morris, and Lewis Cochran, of Sussex. 

On the first ballot Abbett had 218 votes; Albright, 139; 
Whitaker, 116; Hendrickson, 47; Cochran, 44; Cutler, 43, 
and there were 16 scattering votes. It needed over 300 votes 
to make the nomination, and a second ballot was ordered. Al- 
bright was the only man who held his own against Abbett. 
The Cochran, the Cutler and the Hendrickson votes flopped 
over almost bodily to Abbett; and, the second tally showing 
349 votes in his favor, he was declared the nominee. 

Before the convention adjourned it completed the rout of the 
State House autocracy by selecting John R. McPherson as 
Chairman of the Democratic State Committee. 

The Republicans hoped to have the aid of the defeated and 



i 



214 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



embittered Slate House autocracy in the canvass against Abbett^ 
and the prospect that the fight might be won with an acceptable 
candidate led them to turn their eyes towards old John Hill, of 
Morris, as their nominee for Governor. John Hill was an 
uncouth and unread farmer. He was a typical ruralist, a man 
of plain manners, with a good deal of bon homme about him, 
who had managed by his restless activity in local affairs to 
make himself both conspicuous and popular in Morris county. 

He had been elected 
to Congress, as the 
result of one of the 
most searching cam- 
paigns in the history 
of the Fifth district,, 
and he had immor- 
talized himself while 
there by devising the 
postal card and mak- 
ing it a feature of the 
postal facilities of the 
nation. His crude 
oratory was of the 
homely kind that 
"took" with the 
people of that section^ 
and when he went 
into a canvass he 
never missed a school- 
house in all of the three counties comprising his district. At 
the time of the assembling of this convention he had just com- 
pleted his fourth term in Congress, and a good many of the 
shrewd Republicans, taking his successes in his Congressional 
district as an earnest of what he could do throughout the State, 
believed that he was the man whom the party should send out 
to meet Abbett. 

But all the plans that looked to his candidacy were spoiled at 
a little dinner given by William Walter Phelps on the eve of 




John Hill. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 215 

the assembling of the convention. General Sewell, Frederic 
A. Potts, Garret A. Hobart and others of the Republican chief- 
tains who were at the banquet, naturally discussed the political 
situation between bites, and some one suggested the name of 
Jonathan Dixon, of Jersey City, as that of an available man. 
Small of stature and rather thin of voice. Judge Dixon was not 
very imposing in form, but intellectually he was one of the 
cleanest- cut men in the State. His oratory was perfect in its 
elocution, his diction chaste, and his rhetoric trained. His ex- 
temporaneous speeches, printed as they fall from his lips, with- 
out change, read as gracefully as the most carefully- prepared 
orations of scholarly speakers, and it was said of him, at a trial 
in which both appeared, that if he had had the presence and 
the voice of Robert Gilchrist — who was one of the most dra- 
matic orators in the State at the time — he would be one of the 
grandest public speakers in the country. 

With all his splendid intellectual equipments Judge Dixon 
was, however, cold, ungenial, unapproachable and wanting in 
the magnetic qualities that gave Abbett the control of his hearers 
the moment they caught the sound of his voice. That he sat 
on the bench of the Supreme Court of the State was quoted as 
a circumstance of possible import, and at the dinner at which 
his candidacy was determined upon it was a mooted question 
whether he should resign his judgeship upon accepting the 
nomination, or continue in the discharge of his judicial functions 
while the canvass proceeded. 

The convention at which these problems were to be solved 
was held in Trenton a few days after that which nominated 
Abbett. Ex- Senator Hobart, as Chairman of the State Com- 
mittee, called it to order. William Walter Phelps entertained 
the delegates with a brilliant speech when he stepped to the plat- 
form as the temporary Chairman, and John W. Taylor, of Essex, 
was made permanent Chairman. Senator Gardner, of Atlantic, 
on the call of the counties for nominations, presented the name 
of Israel S Adams ; Bergen, through General Duncan, pre- 
sented that of John Hill ; Chairmaa E. S. Renwick, of the 
Essex delegation, put Judge Dixon in nomination. Dixon had 



216 MODERN BITTLES OF TRENTON. 

an easy lead, but there was a manifest disposition not to accord 
the nomination to him till he had given assurances that he 
would lay down his judgeship. A resolution requesting him to 
resign his judicial position was proposed, but Editor Pangborn, 
of Jersey City, gave the delegates his personal assurance that 
Dixon proposed to step down, and the condition of the nomi- 
nation was not put in the platform. 

John W. Griggs, who was among the delegates, insisted, how- 
ever, that the convention wait till Judge Dixon had been com- 
municated with. The chieftains who had been at the Phelps 
dinner had already discussed and settled the problem. They 
had agreed that if the natural majority in the State were Repub- 
lican, the proper thing for Judge Dixon to do would be to lay 
down his judgeship, and go on the stump in his own behalf; but 
they did not feel like demanding of him the abandonment of 
his high judicial position for the mere chance of taking the 
Oovernship from a pretty trustworthy adverse majority. And 
in spite of Mr. Griggs' attempt to delay the convention, they 
succeeded in putting the Judge in nomination before the all-im- 
portant question had been submitted to him. The event showed 
that the want of faith visible among th? delegates, in Pangborn's 
assurance?, was fully justified. 

"The convention," Judge J)ixon wrote in his letter of accept- 
ance, " found me holding a public office, second to none in the 
State for ufe fulness and consequent esteem. It did not request 
me to abandon that position for the purpose of seeking another, 
and I have therefore concluded, after weighing anxiously the 
varying counsels of friends, and influenced perhaps, though I 
trust not, by my own preference, to await where I am the 
decision of the people on the choice which the convention has 
made." 

The eflPect of this little paragraph in the Judge's letter was to 
rob the campaign, that was expected to be full of energy and 
enthusiasm, of its spirit. 

Senator Abbett received the committee appointed to notify 
him of his nomination, at his home, on Sussex Place, in Jersey 
City. His announcement to them that the Democrats he would, 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 217 

if elected, recognize would be the Democrats who did the work 
in the campaign, was made the text of many a philippic by the 
Republican orators and editors, but it served to inspire the 
workers of the party to more strenuous efforts in his behalf. He 
■made a great bid, too, for the favor of the masses by declaring 
subsequently from a platform that " when I am elected Gov- 
•ernor, there will be a change in the Executive Chamber. No 
admission by card business for me ! If I should catch any Sec- 
retary of mine faying who should see me and who should not 
see me, I would dismiss him in a twinkling." 

Joseph L. Naar, Ludlow's Private Secretary, had brought 
Ludlow's administration into disfavor among those who had 
business with the Executive Department by stopping every 
visitor at his desk, and admitting him or not to the Executive 
presence according to his whim. 

At that time Governor Bedle and Senator Abbett were next- 
door neighbors. One stoop, divided by a railing, served the two 
brownstone fronts in which they lived in old Sussex Place in 
Jersey City. Their families exchanged visits, and their social rela- 
tions were close. But those who knew that they represented rival 
factions in the party made it a point of disparagement against 
Abbett that the blue- eyed ex- Governor would refuse to vote for 
him. Bedle had the confidenceof the Hudson publicto an unusual 
degree, and Abbett realized that an understanding that he would 
not support him could not but be hurtful to his prospects. 
Some friends of his waited upon Bedle and urged him to write 
3. letter publicly proclaiming his loyalty to the party and his 
readiness to support its nominee. Governor Bedle shared the 
dislike of all his factional allies for his neighbor, and it was 
only after he had been importuned in season and out that he 
consented to put his pen to paper. When he consented, how- 
ever, he spoke praise without stint, and commended the candi- 
date for his " ability, independence, manliness, integrity and 
personal worth." The remark of one of the local newspapers 
that " when Bedle says that it means something," shows the 
campaign value of that indorsement — a value which was not 
destroyed by any means by the retort of a cynical opposition 



i 



218 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

sheet that the " something " it meant was that Bedle wanted to 
be a Chief Justice. 

There never was such a campaign of vilification as that con- 
ducted by Bedle's factional friends and Abbett's factional 
enemies against him. He was accused of every political crime 
in the calendar, his personal probity was impugned, his private 
life attacked. And the charges were made with such boldness 
that Chairman Hobart, of the Republican State Committee, felt 
justified in saying in a public address to the voters of the State^ 
issued on behalf of the Republican State Committee at the close 
of the campaign, that the Democratic candidate is " not distin- 
guished for purity of character, and his reputation is not, to say 
the least, above suspicion." 

A canvass made on such lines naturally made Mr. Abbett 
apprehensive of the result, and he saw from the start that noth- 
ing but the hardest work could save him from defeat. 

And he faltered not at the prospects. The moment he 
received the nomination, he entered upon one of the most tire- 
less campaigns in all the history of the State. For six or seven 
weeks he did not take his clothes oflP except to change his linen, 
and his average of rest was scarcely four hours a night. He 
addressed as manyas five meetings in one day, and was hurried 
from town to town, in special trains and in coaches with relays 
of horses, without his meals. He held receptions after his 
meetings and probably shook hands, before the campaign was 
over, with half the people in the State. Fond mothers carried 
their children to be kissed by him, and for years afterwards it 
was the proud boast of many a farmer that he had shaken a real 
live Governor by the hand. 

One night, he was addressing a crowd at Perth Amboy at 
eight o'clock, and before eleven o'clock was entertaining another 
throng of voters at Phillipsburg, clear across the State. That 
night's experience became historic, and the details of it, as re- 
lated by William C. Reick, then a local newspaper correspondent^ 
but afterwards a famous editor of the New York " Herald," who 
followed him in his campaign till he could no longer keep pace 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 219' 



with him, is well worth reproducing from the Newark " Evening^ 
News" of Saturday, October 20th, 1883 : 

"As the five o'clock train on the Central Railroad drew up at 
Perth Amboy yesterday afternoon," the newspaper account reads^ 
"a bright- eyed, doughty, little man alighted from the cars in 
the midst of an admiring group of friends, and as he reached 
the platform three cheers for Leon Abbett were sent up. The- 
Democratic gubernatorial candidate and the friends who ac- 
companied him took carriages and were driven to the residence- 
of ex- Assemblyman Convery, where everything was found in 
waiting for the guests, who immediately repaired to the supper 
table. Mayor John T. Garrettson, of Perth Amboy, did the 
honors of the evening. At the table were Leon Abbett, Con- 
gressman McAdoo, William F. Abbett, ex-Assemblyman Con- 
very, Colonel Ziilick, of Essex, and Albert Hoifman. Before 
supper was over the house was surrounded by enthusiastic 
Democrats, and Mr. Abbett was obliged to leave the table and 
receive visitors in the parlor. The Jeffersonian Light Guards,, 
of Perth Amboy, headed by a band, paraded by the house, and 
a line was formed, with Mr. Abbett in the front rank, and the 
march taken up to the City Hall. The hall was used by 
the State Legislature in colonial times, and is much prized by 
the residents of Perth Amboy for its antiquity. Mayor Gar- 
rettson opened the meeting and immediately introduced the 
Democratic gubernatorial candidate. 

" ' It gives me great pleasure,' said Leon Abbett, ' to be pres- 
ent with you this evening. I did not think I could accept your 
invitation, as I had previously promised to speak away off at 
Phillipsburg, in Warren county, and I am going there to-night. 
I have made arrangements to attend both meetings, that I may 
meet the Democracy of the two ends of the State face to face» 
The candidate of the opposite party does not desire that the- 
people should see him and therefore he stays at home. I repre- 
sent in this campaign the principles of the party that placed me 
in nomination, and I am not making a personal fight to satisfy 
my own ambition ; it is that the living principles of the Demo- 
cratic party may receive the sanction of the people that I make 



220 MODERN BA.TTLE3 OF TEENTON. 

this fight. The Democrats have governed the State well ; in 
fact, better than any State in the Union. We do not have to 
pay one dollar of State tax ; the Democratic administration is 
paying the expenses of the government without it. If I am 
elected Governor of this State I pledge myself to support and 
continue the same policy that has so successfully governed our 
State. 

" ' The Republican party is losing votes every hour,' con- 
tinued Mr. Abbett, ' and they cannot explain their sudden alien- 
ation of thousands of voters. It is because good and conscien- 
tious men joined the Republican party; they thought it was the 
right party. But now they find it corrupt to the core and no 
longer worthy to be trusted.' 

" Mr. Abbett spoke of the Republican losses all over the 
•country, and said it was the desire of the Democrats to swell 
the majority this year so that it would be an easy matter to win 
the battle next year, when a President was to be voted for. 

" ' If I am elected,' continued Mr. Abbett, ' I will give to the 
State a pure administration ; and I will do more — I will see 
that the Democratic party shall come into the fight one year 
from now as an organized party, and not as a disorganized mob. 
There is ample opportunity for those who want to get into the 
fold before it is too late. The Bible says that a man may come 
in at the eleventh hour and receive his penny, but the man who 
is outside on the day after election will stay there, for when the 
door is closed it will close forever,' concluded the speaker amid 
enthusiastic applause. 

" Before the cheers had died away he had reached the floor of 
the hall and was forcing his way through the crowd. He and 
his friends took carriages that were in waiting at the door, and 
the horses' heads were turned toward the depot of the Lehigh 
Valley Railroad. The horses were urged to speed by the fre- 
queat use of the whip, and the vehicles were whirled over the 
roads at a rattling pace. At the station an engine and a car were 
in waiting, and the party jumped on board with surprising alac- 
rity. It had at first been Mr. Abbett's intention to take an 
•engine only, but as several of his friends volunteered to accom- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 221 



pany him on his ride against time, an Eastlake car was attached. 
At thirty- four minutes after eight the party started. In the car 
were Leon Abbett, his son William F. Abbett, Albert Hoff- 
man, ex- Assemblyman Convery, Superintendent Broadhead and 
his assistant, Mr. Shay, of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Com- 
pany, and Mr. William C. Reick, correspondent of the Newark 
' Evening News.' It wa^ evident from the start that the engineer 
was doing his best. The impenetrable darkness without ren- 
dered it impossible to see a foot from the car windows, but the 
steel rails outside upon the opposite track and the cross- ties, 
under the light of the car lamps, looked like one continuous 
board road. As the engine rounded curves the occupants of the 
car had to clutch the seats for support. Suddenly the engineer 
drew up, and after the occupants of the car recovered from the 
shock they found that they were at Metuchen Junction. The 
engineer said that he did not want to try to pass a train, and 
the special train was delayed about two minutes and a half ; 
then the journey was resumed and the same break-neck speed 
attained. At seven minutes past nine the train shot past Three 
Bridges, a distance of thirty-two miles from Perth Amboy. The 
trip of thirty- two miles had been made in thirty and a half 
minutes. The train thundered on in the intense darkness, while 
the party in the car were making themselves as comfortable as 
possible, Leon Abbett estimating the number of revolutions the 
drivers were making every second, and the rest of the party 
talking politics and spinning campaign yarns. At Flax Mills 
one of the boxes took fire and a stop had to be made. A hose 
was procured and the fire put out. The hot box caused a delay 
of fifteen and a half minutes, at the expiration of which the 
train was once more set in motion for Phillipsburg. After a 
short run the destination was reached, and it was found that the 
State had been traversed from the Raritan to the Delaware, a 
distance of fifty-four miles, in seventy-three minutes, with 
eighteen minutes lost in stops, making the actual running time 
fifty- five minutes. If the train had not been compelled to slow 
up in stopping the run would have been made in a mile a 
minute. 



222 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

"At Phillipsburg, Parochial Hall was found crowded and 
Allan L. McDermott, of Jersey City, was speaking. Leon 
Abbett was introduced and was enthusiastically received. In the 
•course of his remarks he reviewed the Democratic administra- 
tion, arraigned the Republican party for extravagance in national 
affairs and promised, if elected, to do all in his power to secure 
a government of the people. 

"After the meeting an informal reception was held at the Phil- 
lipsburg House and at half- past eleven the train was again 
making for Perth Amboy. The run was not made so rapidly, 
however, and it was half- past one o'clock before the party 
reached Perth Amboy. 

" Leon Abbett was up bright and early before the rest of his 
friends and was off for Keyport." 

During all this time, the Randolph faction of the party was 
assailing him in the newspapers and furnishing the Republican 
orators with points to use on the stump against him. Ex-Senator 
Henry S. Little kept up his bitter personal attacks, and it 
seemed at one time as though there were doubts of his elec- 
tion. 

Mr. Abbett, however, went right into the strongholds of his 
factional opponents and literally fought them on their own 
ground. This bold system of warfare was not without its 
benefits. 

Mr. Abbett did not make as much of a point of Judge 
Dixon's connection with the discredited system of government 
in Jersey City as he might have made, but confined himself to 
the topic of the tenderness for monopoly interests that for years 
had exempted the railroads from taxation. His engagement with 
the people whom he addressed was to compel these corporations 
to pay taxes on their holdings, just as the individual was wont 
to do, and his promise that if he were elected Governor, enough 
would be raised by the State from this source to forever free the 
people from a direct State tax. 

The promise to free the people from State taxes was a taking 
card in the rural districts, while the engagement to make the 
jailroads bear their share of the public burden won him strength 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 223 

in the cities. And in epite of all the opposition, inside his 
party as well as outside of it, the energetic and tireless Hudson 
Senator was chosen to the Governorship over Dixon by a 
plurality of 8,809. Parsons, the Prohibition candidate, took 
4,153 Republican votes from Dixon, and Urner, Populist can- 
didate, took 2,960 from the Democratic side, so that the net 
Democratic majority was about 7,500. 

The same wire that carried to the public the figures showing 
Abbett's handsome triumph brought the startling news that 
€x- Governor Theodore F. Randolph, the leader of the faction 
which he had just overcome, had dropped dead at his home in 
Morristown. 

Mr. Abbett had just turned forty-eight when this promotion 
came to him. He had come from Philadelphia to make his 
home among Jerseymen and been pressed into politics almost 
as soon as he settled in Hoboken. He had formed a life-long 
partnership with W. J. A. Fuller, a member of the New York 
bar and as keen-witted a lawyer as himself. Mr. Fuller was a 
close friend of Dr. Marcy, whose kinship to General George B. 
McClellan is well known. Judge Fuller was naturally enthused 
when the General was made the Democratic candidate for Presi- 
dent of the United States in the fall of 1864, and when he 
looked around him for men whose tongues could advance the 
General's cause, the availability of his bright young law partner 
suggested itself to him. Abbett had never attended a political 
meeting of any kind up to that time ; but Judge Fuller easily 
persuaded him to go on the stump for the national ticket, and 
he pitched in with characteristic energy. His first political 
speech was made from the steps of the City Hall in Jersey City. 
He was not a polished orator in any sense of the word, but he 
was a vigorous and earnest and logical talker, and he never 
failed to carry the throng with him. 

Recognized at once as a man of power, he was caught up by 
the local politicians and sent to the Legislature frequently after 
1865 as a representative of Hoboken and Jersey City constitu- 
encies. His career as far as it concerned the more important 
matters of State has been portrayed in the pages of this narra- 



224 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

live; but he had been besides an aggressive combatant against 
the Republican jobbers who had entrenched themselves in Jersey 
City. His work in completing their overthrow by establishing^ 
the charter that displaced them was the culmination of a long 
and bitter struggle on his part for home rule and the Democracy 
of the city. He had been active in every political agitation of 
the intervening fifteen year?, and his promotion to the Governor- 
ship was looked upon everywhere as the fitting reward of notable 
public services. 

Mr. Abbett was formally inducted into the Governorship in 
the following January, with the usual ceremonies, and his recep- 
tion in the big parlor connected with the Executive Chamber 
was one of the most largely attended any Governor had ever 
had. Voters who had shaken his hand during the campaign 
flocked to the State House from all parts of the State to renew 
the acquaintance. They brought their wives and sisters and 
sweethearts with them, and two or three women carried in their 
arms babes whom he had kissed during the campaign to be 
kissed again. 

"See, Governor," said one beaming-faced matron, pressing 
her finger against the cheek of her child, "that's just the place 
where you kissed Sis when you was down to Salem last fall." 

The Governor took the hint, and when the proud mother passed 
down the line there was another red spot on that little one's 
cheek. 

But the tribute the Governor most highly prized, probably, 
was that paid him by his own daughter. Miss Mamie, when, the 
procession grown thin, she fell in at the end of the line and 
walked in her turn to him to salute him. He listened to her 
congratulations and compliments with a beaming face which 
bespoke his pleasure at her graceful attentions. 

In his inaugural Governor Abbett made railroad taxation his 
theme. 

"The evil of bartering away the sovereign rights of the Sate 
over taxation," he said, " is now apparent to all, but it is a doc- 
trine which the courts have recognized, and complete sovereignty 
can never be restored^to the State until all contracts on the subject 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 225 

of taxation are extinguished. Is there power in the State to 
resume its iost sovereignty ? How can it extinguish these con- 
tracts ? I am of the opinion that it can be done upon compen- 
sation, and that the measure of such compensation can be de- 
termined by a court and jury in the same manner that they 
would determine the Value of real estate taken for public uses 
by private corporations. * * * Our Court of Errors has 
held that in the exercise of eminent domain the Legislature may 
confiscate shares in corporations, and even corporate franchises 
may be taken for public uses upon just compensation, and has 
declared that the title of this species of property is no more 
secure against invasion, when the public uses require it, than is 
the ownership of real estate. * * * Xhe public requires 
the extinguishing of these contracts in order that the provisions 
of our Constitution which require that property shall be assessed 
for taxes under general laws and by uniform rules according to 
its true value, may be obeyed." 

Further on in the address the Governor urged legislation 
looking to the accomplishment of these ends. He pronounced 
himself opposed to the levy of any direct State tax, and sug- 
gested that this might be avoided — first, by increasing the per- 
centage of tax paid by the railroads on their roads, equipments 
and appendages ; second, by subjecting the irrepealable franchises 
of the companies to taxation ; third, by taxing other than rail- 
road corporatioEs, such as telegraph and telephone companies, 
gas, insurance and trust companies and the like ; fourth, by ex- 
acting license fees from foreign companies doing business in the 
State ; and, fifth, by imposing a collateral inheritance tax. But 
the chief of these suggestions was that concerning the irrepeal- 
able franchises of the railroads. 

" Tax us ? " the railroads had protested ; " why, we are ex- 
empt from taxation under a contract from the State." 

" Humph," Abbett proposed to say to them ; " so you have 
an irrepealable contract that exempts you from taxation, eh ? 
Well, that contract itself is a very valuable piece of property ; 
we will tax that." 

15 



CHAPTER XX. 

It Takes a Good Many Pages to Tell How the Railroads Were 

Forced to Pay Their Taxes, and How Mr. Corbin was 

Embarrassed by' Two Senators and Two Letters, 

AND How Bitt rly the State Had to 

Fight the D., L. and W. E. R. 

Co. to Get Her Dues. 




HILE Governor Abbett's inaugural of course gave 



direction and vigor to the current of legislative talk, 
the subject of railroad taxation and of the devices 
that were possible to overcome the irrepealable exemp- 
tions, was not, as we have seen, a new one by any means. Away 
back in 1879 Senator Cobb, of Morris, had attempted to force 
the taxation of the capital stock and franchise of the Tuckerton 
and Atlantic road, which was at that time seeking a charter; 
and after the passage of the Somerset and Easton Railroad bill 
in 1872, Senator Cutler had asked for a special commission to 
report a general Jaw for the taxation of railroad property. 
Governor Abbett himself, while sitting in the Senate for Hudson 
county, had, in 1876, offered a bill for the taxation of corpora- 
tion holdings equally with all other classes of property. Assem- 
blyman Farrier pushed an act of that purport through the 
Legislature, but Governor Parker, claiming that it was inef- 
fective or oppressive or crude in some of its provisions, sent it 
back with his objections. In each of his three annual messages — 
1882-3-4 — Governor Ludlow too had rung the changes on his 
demand for an intelligent and comprehensive tax law ; and the 
Senate of 1883 had discussed a scheme of legislation for two 
days and then discarded it. 

But with Governor Abbett's accession to the Governorship, 
the movement for the reform presented an aspect of exceptional 
(226) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 227 

briskness. The Governor was looked upon as a man of unusual 
force and determination, and his treatment of the question in 
iiis inaugural was recognized by all the railroad men in the 
State as a definitive declaration of war. 

The Legislature with which he had to struggle for the carry- 
ing out of his recommendations, was divided politically. The 
Senate was in the control of the Republicans, with the blonde 
Senator from Union, Benjamin A. Vail, sitting on the presiding 
officer's dais. The Assembly was Democratic, with Alfred B. 
"Stoney — a stalwart six-footer, who had devoted his life to steam- 
boat-running until he came into the Assembly to represent one 
of the Monmouth districts — in the Chair. A conspicuous absentee 
from the roll of equal- taxation advocates, was Assemblyman 
Cator. He would have been gladly returned to the seat which 
be had held for two years, by his district constituents, but he 
had set his ambitious heart on the Governorship ; and in the 
belief that a demonstration of his ability to win an office from 
the great Democratic county of Hudson would commend him to 
the favor of the Republican State Convention, he had been 
tempted into accepting the Republican nomination for State 
Senator in the poll of the preceding fall. The Democrats 
feared that the popularity of his equal- taxation crusade would 
lose them the choice office, and they felt the necessity of selecting 
their most available man to confront him with. E. F. C. 
Young, a rising power in business and politics, led them to the 
house on Bergen Heights next to that in which Cator lived, to 
find a competitor for him. William Brinkerhoff was not only 
Cator's neighbor, but his close and intimate friend. He came of 
an old Dutch family that had at one time owned most of Bergen 
Hill. He had been Mayor of old Bergen City when a beard- 
less boy, and later a member of the State Constitutional Com- 
mission of 1873.. Public questions had engaged a large share 
of his attention. He had displayed his public spirit in opposing 
and defeating several public jobs. Even then the county was 
ringing with the echoes of his battle with the local Board of 
Freeholders over a job by which they had attempted to saddle 
^he county with a costly court-house site ; and because he had 



228 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the confidence of the people Mr. Young urged him as best fitted 
to measure lances with the rising anti-monopcly light. The 
contest was a memorable one. But the grounded political 
affiliations of the people overbore their zeal in the cause of 
equal taxation, and believing likely that he might be trusted to- 
work as zealously in the same direction, they gave their support 
to Brinkerhoff, and Mr. Cator was thus barred from a seat in 
the Legislature that was destined to deal decisively at last with 

the railroad taxa- 
tion problem that 
so absorbed him. 

It is not to be 
understood that the 
Legislature was un- 
fitted for the task, 
even if Mr. Cator 
was not then to be 
its moving spirit. 
At the Senate desks 
were Gardner, of 
Websterian mould ;, 
rugged old Heze- 
kiah Smith, of Bur- 
lington ; Stainsby,. 
the veteran of Essex 
county Republican- 
ism ; Youngblood, 
of Morris, looking 
for all the world 

William Harrigan. ,., . ,. i ii 

like a jaundiced old 
woman behind his spectacles ; the caustic-tongued Griggs, of 
Passaic ; Brinkerhoff, scrupulous about the cut of his clothes 
and the snowy whiteness of his linen ; and Vail, whose mild 
blue eyes and boyish face gave no sign of the mental power that 
lay behind them. Hudson sent to the Assembly chamber an 
advocate of equal taxation of equal zeal with Cator, in the 
smooth-tongued Frank O. Cole; the erudite Edwin O. Chap-^ 




MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 229 

man, and handsome Colonel Samuel D. Dickinson, tall of figure 
with rosy face and long, flowing blonde mustache, were among 
his colleagues. The old war-horse, William Harrigan, full of 
wit and jest, white-bearded as he was; John L. Armitage, with 
a somewhat shrewish face; Rush Burgess, suggesting in his 
manner and air an old-time Virginian statesman, and Lehlbach, 
were conspicuous figures in the Essex gallery. William Prall, 
now a distinguished divine in the West, but then a very young 
man with a very loud voice, took his first flight in pulpit oratory 
from the Passaic seats. Dr. Chattle was one of the three from 
Monmouth — one could read in his face the signs that he was a 
Prohibitionist and a Democrat. Edward S. Savage, a polished 
lawyer of sedate manner, was among the Middlesex men. 
Altogether both chambers held enough men of individuality, 
compass and culture to present the problem in all its varied 
phases. 

The session was a week old before Governor Ludlow laid 
down his high office to his successor, and in his annual message, 
submitted to the Houses at their organization meeting, he had 
paved the way for the work he knew Governor Abbett was to 
■enter upon. 

" The question of railroad taxation has risen to be one of the 
highest consideration, and properly so," he said, in part. " The 
investment in railroad property in the State is $227,384,534. 
Taking one consideration with another, it is fair to assume that 
the rate paid by the railroads would be a proper one if it were 
assessed upon the full and true value of their property. The 
trouble is that it is not so levied." 

These introductory observations led him into an exhaustive 
presentation of the issue. It commanded the attention of the 
two Houses at once, and that part of his message was referred, 
by a concurrent resolution, to a joint committee, consisting of 
Senators Griggs and Schenck, Republicans, and Brinkerhoff", 
Democrat, on behalf of the Senate, and Assemblymen Savage 
and Neighbour, Democrats, and Armstrong, Republican, on be- 
half of the House. The committee prepared to make a careful 
•exploration of the whole field, and they set days for argument 



230 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

by those who, from their positions, were supposed to be best 
primed with information and suggestions. The railroads were 
not entirely unrepresented in the committee, nor were their 
spokesmen overlooked in the extension of invitations. Early in 
February these appeared to present their side of the question. 
Senator Sewell was there to urge that the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road paid a larger sum to the State than any other road, and 
that, in addition, it made Jersey City a gift of $30,000 per 
year. General Robert F. Stockton defended the Erie. Henry 
S. Little, the Jersey Central Receiver, urged that his company 
should not be required to pay taxes on land that it had lifted up 
out of the river, and ex- Governor Bedle, its counsel, was on 
hand to say that the company paid taxes through the American 
Dock and Improvement Company, a corporation of its own cre- 
ation, in whose name it held its shore- land title. Vice President 
Gibbon pleaded that the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western, 
besides a State tax of $140,000, paid $15,000 to the Iccalitiea 
where its property was located, of which a pittance of $3,000 to 
$5,000 only went to Jersey City, and Cortlandt Parker was on 
hand to say for the New York and Greenwood Lake road that 
it could not earn its own living even, to say nothing of helping 
to sustain the community. 

A single question put by Senator Griggs to this notable aggre- 
gation of special leaders presented the two forces that operated 
together in the end to produce the settlement that was reached. 

" Would your road," he asked of ex- Governor Bedle, " sur- 
render its irrepealable contract of exemption if the State would 
in her turn surrender her right to take its property at first 
cost ? " 

The portly ex Governor could not answer that question off- 
hand, of course ; he would have to consult with the directors 
first. The House members were not satisfied with the progress 
made by the Joint Committee. They had a suspicion that the 
railroads had inspired its creation, and that it not only proposed 
to make its inquiry exhaustive, but proposed to make it ex- 
hausting as well — in the hope of delaying the presentation of an 
act till it became too late to perfect and pass it. Even the Sen- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 231 



ate, traditionally responsive to corporation influences, was restive 
while the plodding inquiry dragged its slow length along, and 
exploded its suddenly- acquired anti- monopoly ardor in the pass- 
age of a concurrent resolution, with the votes of only Bfatty, 
Gardner and Cranmer in the negative, so amending the State 
Constitution as to bar corporations that refused to obey the gen- 
eral tax laws from the enjoyment of any further legislation. 

In the House the defiant corporations were pelted with bills 
from all directions. 

Mr. Prall and Mr. Cole were the most active in these assaults. 
Prall handed up a number of bills regulating the taxation of 
railroads ; Cole led off with an attack on the New Jersey Cen- 
tral Railroad under cover of a resolution, demanding to know 
by what right the State's privilege to take possession of that 
company's property which had accrued in 1879, had been barred 
until 1889, and requesting the views of the Attorney- General as 
to the right of the Legislature of 1864, from which the railroad 
had secured its ten years of additional grace, to extend it. He 
followed this up with a bill providing that all property belong- 
ing to railroads should be taxed on the same basis and at the 
same rate as property belonging to individuals, and with a second 
forbidding the railroads to acquire real estate till they had filed 
with the Secretary of State a surrender of their exemptions and 
an agreement to pay taxes at the full local rate. Attorney- 
General Stockton drew the sting from the inquiry into the Cen- 
tral Railroad's extended time- grant with an opinion declaring that 
if the company had acted in good faith on the act of 1864, that 
act itself had become a part of its irrepealable contract with the 

State. 

Governor Abbett was not inactive all this time. He was 
busy with a number of counselors in the preparation of his own 
equal-tax act. It was not an easy thing for him to withstand 
the pressure to which the railroad people subjected him for an 
abatement of his energies. The Democratic railroad partisans 
warned him that he would wreck the party if he persisted in 
his course, while other railroad people who did not appeal to 
him on partisan grouoda told him that his political future 



232 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

would be as blaok as that marked out for Ludlow. The 
Governor met these forebodiogs with the answer that the party 
which could carry on the government of the State without 
making the farmers foot the bill would be impregnable, and 
that his policy would get votes from the people in spite of all 
that the corporations might do. And so he went along with 
the preparation of his bill till he had perfected it and then 
placed it in Mr. Prall's hands for presentation to the Assembly. 
The moment it made its appearance on the calendar the Legis- 
lature was rent by differences of view as to whether it proposed 
the most effective method of reaching the point. It was a 
thoroughly-equal taxation bill ; it came to be known through 
all the subsequent discussions as the Governor's bill, and be- 
cause the House was Democratic it was enthusiastically for it. 
The Senate, more amenable to railroad influences, pinned its 
faith to the less rigorous bill which the Joint Committee was 
formulating, and which was expected, from the character of the 
committee, to be more conservative of railroad interests. 

The subsequent progress of the deliberations brought the 
dead- lock between the two Houses into the boldest relief. 
Jersey City, which would most largely profit by that clause of 
the Governor's bill subjecting railroad property to taxation at 
the full rate, sent a delegation of citizens to argue in its behalf 
before a Committee of the Whole towards the close of Febru- 
ary. S. B. Ransom, one of these, insisted that one-fourth of 
all the assessable property in the State had been taken out of 
the reach of the tax-gatherer by the railroads, and that, on 
the assumption that the cost of maintaining the local govern- 
ments all over the State was $12,000,000, the Commonwealth 
was practically paying the roads a subsidy of $3,000,000 
annually. Charles L. Corbin made an exhaustive argument in 
favor of the bill; Cortlandt Parker, ex- Secretary Robeson and 
ex- Governor Bedle were present to make the responses for the 
corporations. 

In spite of the sentiment that backed it in the Assembly, the 
Governor's act had not climbed up very high on the calendar 
before the Joint Committee threw its bill into the arena of dis- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 233 

Hussion. Just as those interested in the conflict had anticipated, 
it was much more conservative than the one to which the House 
had given its adhesion. It impcsid a tax of one-half of one per 
oent. upon the franchise for the benefit of the State, and another 
tax of one per cent, upon the property of the companies, except- 
ing the roadbed, for the aid of the municipalities in which it 
lay.* The act was simultaneously offered in Senate and House, 
Mr. Griggs being its sponsor in the upper branch, and Neighbour, 
•of Morris, in the lower branch. 

The two Houses addressed themselves to the perfection of the 
particular bill to which they were disposed. The Senate had 
set its face against the Governor's bill ; the House completely 
ignored the joint committee's bill. When Neighbour, who led 
the fight for the railroads, made an attempt to calendar the 
oommittee's bill, Mr. Cole met the motion with the demand 
that the House order the Governor's bill engrossed for third 
reading. This brought Keasbey of Essex, Savage of Middlesex, 
and Armstrong of Camden to their feet with obstructive tactics. 
Keasbey wanted to amend it further, and that could not be done 
after it had passed the stage of second reading; Savage and 
Armstrong wanted more time to consider it. The bill was 
progressed, however, and sent to the engrosser's room to be put 
in shape for final passage. The other faction insisted upon the 
Joint Committee's bill being advanced a peg at the same time. 
It was Cole's turn now to be an obstructionist. The clause 
exempting the roadbed from taxation wa^ an offense to his anti- 
monopoly nostrils, and he moved that it be stricken out. The 
other clause fixing the rate at less than the prevailing local rate 
was also obnoxious to him, and he demanded the substitution 
for it of another making the tax rate the same as that on other 

* To be more specific, railroad and canal property is assessed under the act 
as follows : All real and pergonal property, including franchise, at one-half 
of one per cent, for the use of the State ; all real estate, outside of main stem 
(which is legislated to be the roadbed not exceeding one hundred feet in 
■width and buildings thereon), is subject to an additional assessment for the use 
of the municipalities in which the property is found, at local rates, but not to 
■exceed one per cent. Personal property and franchises of these corporations 
are exempt from municipal tax. 



234 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



property. He carried the House with him in both these- 
assaults upon the Committee's work. Not till the bill had beert 
denuded of all the features that made it different from the 
Governor's bill was it allowed to go upon the calendar for third 
reading. North, of Atlantic, was the only one whose vote was- 
cast in the negative. 

After the Governor's bill bad been passed by the House it 
was rushed to the Senate for concurrence. The Senate at that 

time was wrestling^ 
with the Joint Com- 
mittee bill. Two 
reports had brought it 
to the calendar for dis- 
cussion. One of thesCy 
the majority report,, 
recommended it with- 
out amendment. Sena- 
tor Brinkerhoff's- 
minority report fa- 
vored the change of 
the taxing clause so 
as to make it an equal- 
taxation measure. 
Governor Abbett's bil^ 
remained in the pocket 
of the committee, and 
never saw daylight in 
the Senate Chamber. 
Gardner, of Atlantic, the able advocate on the floor of railroad 
interests, was not satisfied even with the majority report. The 
tax on franchises was not consonant with his ideas. With Grigg& 
standing for the bill, and Brinkerhoff for equal taxation, and 
Gardner opposing the franchise tax, the struggle became a three- 
cornered one, and the discussion lasted for three whole days. 

The Senate, while the bill was under consideration, gave 
public hearings to all who desired to appear before it, and it was 
announced that at one of these hearings ex-Assemblyman Cator 




John W. Griggs. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 23& 



was to speak for the more liberal bill the Governor had devised. 
The brilliantly- lighted Senate Chamber was crowded to suffoca- 
tion with an expectant audience at eight o'clock on the evening^ 
fixed for this hearing. 

Gator, in evening dress, was in beautiful trim for the intellectual 
struggle he saw before him. His eyes met such notable railroad 
lawyers as Bedle, Parker and Thomas N. McCarter. When they 
had finished their pleas, Cator stepped to the middle aisle, and,, 
with an argument in behalf of the Governor's act equally bril- 
liant and eloquent, kept the listening throng in cheers till he 
stepped out of view at midnight. It was the most masterly and 
complete presentation of the railroad tax problems to which the 
agitation had given birth, and as with a deluge swept away all 
the technical objections that had been interposed by the railroad 
advocates. 

The demonstration was, however, without its effect upon the 
Senate, which still kept the Governor's measure out of view and 
proceeded with the consideration of the Joint Committee's bill. 
When it was on second reading, over a hundred amendments 
were considered and debated to meet the constitutional objections 
which lawyers Frederic W. Stevens, Charles L. Corbin and 
Barker Gummere, who had been consulted about it, thought 
might possibly be made to it. Governor Abbett's sincerity in 
pushing for some scheme of legislation that would bring the 
corporations to the mark, was demonstrated by the aid he gave 
the act, when he saw that his own would not be accepted by the 
Senate. Old Senator Ezra Miller, of Bergen, who had made a 
fortune out of the railroads with his car buffers, was disposed to 
vote with the ten Senators who were opposed to the imposition 
of a tax on franchises. If he had allied himself with them,, 
that very essential and important feature of the Joint Com- 
mittee's tax scheme would have been destroyed, and the value 
of the scheme as a whole must have been seriously impaired. 
Even Mr. Griggs gives Governor Abbett the credit of having 
enrolled the Bergen Senator with the ten who favored the tax- 
ation of franchises, and so contributed essentially to making it 
a part of the law. Wherever the Governor found a Democratic 



236 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



Senator wavering in the support of the bill in its most stringent 
shape, he subjected him to the pressure that kept him in line for 
it. When, after all the amendments had been considered and 
■disposed of, the act was eventually engrossed in practically the 
shape in which it had come from the Committee's hands. Sena- 
tors Griggs and Vail sat up all night to compare it, and the 
next day it went through the Senate by unanimous vote. 

The House had now passed Abbett's equal taxation bill ; the 
Senate had committed itself to the Joint Committee's less rigor- 
ous measure, and the 
deadlock between the 
Houses that was threat- 
ened when the agitation 
began was on. Any eye 
could see that the Sen- 
ate would yield no more ; 
it was marveled, indeed, 
that, in view of the 
known influence of the 
railroads in the chamber, 
it had conceded so much. 
The only unsolved 
problem of the agitation 
was whether the House 
would yield ; it clam- 
ored for the Governor's 
bill, denounced the Sen- 
ate bill as of railroad 
inspiration and dicta- 
tion, and refused to accept it. Chapman declared that he would 
not vote for such a measure. Harrigan was going to stay all 
summer, if it were necessary, to get equal taxation. 

Governor Abbett made the attitude of the House the occasion 
of a new attempt to force the act which he had drawn, out of the 
Senate committee, which was holding it back. He finally threat- 
-ened to withhold his signature from a host of appropriation bills 
in which Senators were interested until a revenue bill had been 




Edward 3. Savage. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 237 



passed. But the Senators were not daunted, and they held their 
ground firmly. The certainty that unless there were conces- 
sions on the part of the House no bill at all would be passed, 
worked a gradual change of sentiment among its members. 
Burgess suggested that a compromise was better than failure ; 
Lehlbach said something about half a loaf; Savage made the 
point that even the Senate bill would increase the State's reve- 
nue by about $300,000 a year, and Cole himself finally acknowl- 
edged that a little was better than nothing. And so the House 
eventually gave an unwilling assent to the Joint Committee's 
measure, while it directed the Clerk to enter on his minutes ita 
formal protest against the Senate's refusal to aid it in securing 
the passing of a " genuine equal taxation bill." 

The act made the system of taxation operative by authorizing 
the Governor to appoint a State Board of Assessors to ascertain 
values and supervise the collection of the railroad moneys. As 
the bill was the product of Houses politically divided, it re- 
quired that this board of four members should be non partisan ; 
and, that the railroads should not be entirely voiceless in the 
selection of the men, it forbade the Governor to commission 
them without the consent of the Senate. One of the nomina- 
tions — that of William H. Jackson, of Passaic county — sent by 
the Governor to the Senate was not agreeable to Senator Griggs,, 
and the name of Allan L. McDermott, which was in the list, 
aroused the pugnacity of all the railroad Senators. It was a 
particular objection to him that he was especially close to Gov- 
ernor Abbett. Because of the fervor with which he had espoused 
the cause of equal taxation he was denounced as an Anarchist. 
Senate President Vail arose in his place when McDermott's 
name was under consideration to announce that he had a letter 
in his hand from a particularly distinguished Jersey City lawyer^ 
declaring McDermott to be utterly unfitted for the position. 

"And I," said Senator Brinkerhoflf, " have another letter from 
an equally distinguished lawyer in Jersey City, declaring Mc- 
Dermott to be just the man for the place. If the Senator from 
Union will tell me what name is at the bottom of the letter 



238 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

which he ha? received, we'll exchange confidences, and I will 
give him the name of the writer of the letter I hold." 

" Well, the letter I have bears the signature of Charles L. 
Corbin, of Jersey City," Youngblood answered. 

"And the letter I have," rejoined the astonished Brinkerhoff, 
^' is signed by Charles L, Corbin, of Jersey City, too." 

The Senate confirmed Edward Bettle, of Camden, and ex- 
Sheriff A. M. Reynolds, whose names had been sent into the 
Senate at the same time, but rejected McDermott, and, at the 
instance of Senator Griggs, Jackson as well. The Governor 
submitted the name of ex-United States Senator Alexander G. 
•Cattell, of Camden, in place of Jackson's, but renominated Mc- 
Dermott. Cattell was confirmed at once ; but, while the con- 
firmation of McDermott was pending, the hour fixed for the 
close of the session arrived, and President Vail arbitrarily ad- 
journed the Senate, without waiting for the formality of a 
motion. The Senators had not escaped from the State House, 
however, before they were served with a notice from the Gov- 
ernor calling them into extra session. McDermott's name was 
.passed by them at this special sitting, and the new board was 
thus made complete for organization and business. 

Arrayed against himself by the two warring Senators and 
accused of carrying two faces, because of the varying construc- 
tions that had been put upon his letters. Counselor Corbin felt 
it necessary to explain things, and a few days later he published 
a circular letter that was read with much interest at the time. 

To use a lawyer's phrase, it was in the words and figures that 
follow, to wit : 

My action with reference to the confirmation of one of the State Assessors 
having been publicly misrepresented, I make this statement of the facts, 
which I shall print for convenient circulation among my acquaintances. 

On the 21st of April I wrote a letter to Senator Vail and another to Senator 
Brinkerhoff, to further the confirmation of Mr. McDermott as a Railroad 
Assessor. I have not been able to get a copy of my letter to Senator Brink- 
erhoff, which he left on the table of the Secretary of the Senate. As I 
remember it, I urged the importance of having one working lawyer on the 
board, and concluded by saying: 

"As to Mr. McDermott's integrity, I know of no ground for questioning it 
ibeyond the fact that he is a strong Democrat." 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 239 



The letter to Senator Vail was suggested by his statement, reported to me, 
ithat he opposed McDermott as a corrupt man. It was, as it shows by its 
terms, a personal letter, written with that carelessness and freedom which I 
«upi30sed our friendly relations would warrant ; but I do not see how anyone 
•can find in it any ground to rejjresent me as opposing the confirmation of Mr. 
McDermott, or how anyone could misunderstand my intention to promote it. 

I have obtained from Senator Vail the following copy of my letter : 

"Jersey City, April 21st, 189i. 
^ ' Dear Senator Vail: 

" I want to say in regard to McDermott's appointment, that I think it is a mistalce to 
legard him as a corrupt man. He is a scheming politician, given to 'deals,' and 
'combinations' and 'bargains' to forward political ends and personal ambition, but 
I do not think that as an Assessor he would be open to a bribe in any form. I think he 
would be a better Assessor than any one of the three already confirmed, because more 
•competent. 

" Yours truly, 

"C. L. CORBIN." 

My opinion that McDermott was more competent than the other Assessors 
-was founded simply on the fact that he is a lawyer. The Assessors will have 
legal questions to decide at every step. In fact this board is a court, and 
.gives judgments which are subject to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. 

The morning after the confirmation of Mr. McDermott, there was pub- 
lished in the New York Tribune and other papers a statement representing 
in effect that I had written letters on both sides of the controversy over the 
confirmation, and that my duplicity had been exposed in the Senate. On 
inquiry, I learned that such an impression had undoubtedly been created in 
the Senate by quotations made by Senator Vail from my letter without pro- 
ducing it, and that he had permitted the impression to stand uncorrected. 

I sent at once the following correction to the Tribune and other papers: 

" In the Tribime this mornmg I am represented as having written to one New 
Jersey State Senator opposing, and to another recommending, the confirmation of Mr. 
McDermott as State Assessor of Railroads in New Jersey. This is without foundation. 
To both Senator's I wrote urging his confirmation. To Senator Vail, who had declared 
him to be corrupt, I wrote saying that though Mr. McDermott was a politician and given 
to 'deals,' 'combinations' and 'bargains,' he was not a corrupt man aud was a 
■competent man for the office. To Senator Vail and my other Republican friends in the 
New Jersey State Senate who declare that a man who makes ' deals ' must be corrupt, 
I have to say ; Let him who is without this sin among you cast the first stone at 
McDermott. 

"April 23d, 1894. Charles L Corbin." 

I do not pretend to be in the humor to pay Senator Vail any compliments, 
but as I am trying to be as candid as possible, I feel bound to say, in view of 
my hasty scriptural fling at him, that I believe that his motives and those of 
other Senators in opposing the confirmation were in the main good, and that 
his reputation as a conscientious public man is merited. 

I add the following letter, received from Senator Vail, in response to my 
request to send me my letter or a copy of it : 



240 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



" Rahway, N. J., April 25th, 1894. 
"My Deae Sik— Your letter dated April 22d reached me ouly this morning. I re- 
turn you letter of April 21st as requested. In opposing McDermott's confirmation in 
executive session, I said that '1 had that morning received a letter from a prominent 
lawyer of Jersey City in which he said that he thought it was a mistake to say that McD. 
was a corrupt man, but that he would make any deal or bargain for political ends and 
personal ambition,' and I added, that 'to my mind that was a proper definition of a. 
corrupt man.' 

" 1 felt that my remarks were justified by your letter, but I did not intend to use your 
name, and should not have done so had not BrinkerhofF's actian compelled me to. I 
would like to have your letter returned to me unless you object. 

'• Yrs. very truly, 

" B. A. Vail. 
"Mr, C. L. Corbin. 

"P. S.— Since writing this letter I have seen yojir card, published in 'The Argus/ 
You will pardon me, therefore, for retaining the original and sending you the copy. 

" Yours truly, 

"V." 

On this letter I make only this comment, the jus' ice of which, I think, is 
manifest— that, after having stated part of my letter, and thereby created a 
false impression of duplicity, Senator Vail should have corrected it by stating 
the rest. 

The following correspondence with Senator Youngblood will explain 
itself. I freely paidon his impertinence, in consideration of his candor : 

" MoRRiSTOWN, April 23d, 1884. 

" Dear Sir— Accept my congratulations on your success as a straddler. One kind of 
a letter to Senator BrinkerhoiT and another kind to Senator Vail shows that it is hardly 
safe to rely upon you for advice or suggestion on matters pertaining to the public welfare. 

" Would it not be well, in order to place yourself right before the public, to have the 

two letters published ? 

" Yours very truly, 
" Charles L. Corbin, Esq^ Jas C. Youngblood." 

" Jersey City, April 24th, 1884. 
"Hon. James C. Youngblood : 

"Dear Sir— Do you really believe that I wrote one letter to Vail opposing, and 
another to Brinkerhoft' supporting, the nomination of McDermott? If so, on what 
ground do you base that belief? 

" I do not understand the action of yourself and others, including those in the 
Senate on whom I place most reliance. You say that the nomination of McDermott 
■was pait of a bargain between the Governor and the railroads. Assuming it to be so, 
what did you do? You ratified those parts of the bargain that profited the railroads, 
and reserved your objections for that part which promised some advantage to the 
taxpayers. 

"I know McDermott well. He is a Democratic politician. He is no civil service 
reformer, neither are his political associates in New Jersey. He gets and gives political 
appointments by 'combinations,' as many politicians of both parties unfortunately 
do. But his personal integrity has never, so far as I know, been justly questioned. 
That is, as a judge he does not sell justice, as a city officer he does not defraud the city, 
and as an Assessor there is no reason to suppose that he would be corrupt in the dis- 
charge of his ofiQcial duties. That was the important question for the Senate, as I 
supposed, and on that point, and on his competency, I give evidence. 

"In my private letter to Swiator Vail I discussed McDermott's character with more 
freedom and detail than in the one to Brinkerhoff, which I authorized him to use, but 
iu both I urged McDermott's confiimation, and 1 am surprised that Senator Vail should 
have allowed a different impression to prevail. 

" Yours trulv, 

"C. L. COEBIN." 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 24^1 



"Tliis completes the history of my experience in the matter of political' 
patronage up to date, and I trutt for all time. 

"Now that I have the floor, I will improve the occasion by some comments 
on the appointments. It was represented by Senators who ought to know 
that one or more of the Assessors received appointment and confirmation as 
' representing ' the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. It seems to have been con- 
ceded that the company was entitled to be ' represented.' The law contem- 
plates judicial impartiality on the part of the Assessors, and provides that they 
shall not be interested in any railroad company. The first act under the new 
law was therefore in violation of its spirit. A railroad company claiming to 
name its own Assessors! Look at the imprudence of it. A litigant might as 
well claim to be ' represented' on the jury that tries his case. The Pennsyl- 
vania Eailroad Company will next ask to be 'represented' in the Court of 
Chancery and Supreme Court. 

"And now, it is said, the Erie complain that they have been cheated out of 
a ' representative ! ' Where do the people of New Jersey come in ? Some 
very queer ideas seem to have found lodgment in New Jersey politics under 
railroad government. 

"Now, I do not say that these Assessors will favor any railroad company. 
They may be all the more scrupulous because of the suspicions attending 
their appointment. To say of an Assessor that he takes the ofiice for the 
express purpose of exercising his judicial powers with favor to a particular 
company, or with partiality to railroads generally, is to make a graver charge 
against him than any that has been brought against McDermott. 

"The work of the Assessors will be subjected to a public scrutiny such as no 
Assessors in New Jersey ever had to undergo before. The means of testing its 
uprightness are open to us all in the daily quotations of the Stock Exchange. 
The Assessors must be treated fairly and judged by their work. 

"April 28th, 1884. Charles L. Corbin." 

Cattell and Bettle were both Pennsylvania Railroad men, and 
these concessions to it only served to embitter the Jersey Central 
people, who were implacably hostile to the act anyhow. The 
Jersey Central Company flew to the courts for refuge. It had 
the act removed on certiorari to the Supreme Court for review. 
Its claims were that, applying only to railroad corporations, the 
legislation was for a particuler interest, special, and therefore 
unconstitutional, and that the values fixed upon its franchise 
and property by the State Board of Assessors were excessive^ 
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company and the Erie accepted the 
act to the extent at any rate of paying their taxes for that year 
as fixed by the Board, into the State treasury, upon the under- 

16 



242 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



standing that if the Central Railroad Company's litigation pre- 
vailed the moneys should be repaid to them. 

A notable array of lawyers appeared in court to prosecute and 
defend the Central's test suit. Ex- Judge William T. Hoffman, 
an eloquent Englishtown barrister, who had served seven years 
on the bench of the Hudson county court, and a conspicuous 
Republican leader; Allan L. McDermott, of Jersey City, and 
William S. Gummere, of Trenton, assisted Attorney-General 
8tockton in defending the work of the State Board and the 

legality of the act. 
The keen, shrewd, 
insinuating and oily 
Benjamin Williamson, 
vigorous in spite of 
his advanced years ; 
William S. Keracher, 
noted as the man \yho 
had sent a band of 
Molly Maguires from 
the Pennsylvania coal 
mines to the gallows, 
and Robert W. De 
Forest,* appeared for 
the railroads. Vol- 
umes of testimony 
were taken before Su- 
preme Court Commis- 
sioner George W. Cas- 
sedy, and every item of railroad property was made the object 
of minute inquiry as to cost and value. The case was argued 
in the Supreme Court at the November Term of 1885. 

In the February following (1886), the State was thrown into 
confusion by the reading of Chief Justice Beasley's opinion, 
declaring the act unconstitutional and inoperative. The con- 
fusion sprang from the fact that the decision not only left the 
State without a source of revenue for the next fiscal year, but 
also subjected it to the necessity of repaying to the railroads the 




William T. Hoffman. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 243 

moneys they had conditionally paid. They abstained, however, 
from making any demand upon the State, and the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company even advanced the amount of its tax 
bill for the next year, agreeing to await the determination of 
the Court of Errors and Appeal?, to which the Chief Justice's 
decision was taken for review. When the Chief Justice's 
adverse opinion was read, Governor Abbett found some comfort 
in giving Senator Griggs credit for the defeated legislation, and 
insisting that if his own bill had been put through it would not 
have been so easily overturned. The appeal was heard by the 
higher court at its next sitting, and a few months later Chief 
Justice Beasley's opinion was overruled, and the act maintained. 
It was now Senator Griggs' turn to laugh, and he insisted that 
if it had been Governor Abbett's bill that the court had been 
asked to maintain, the result would have been different. 

The Legislature of 1887 was compelled to return to the con- 
sideration of the Railroad Tax laws. The Delaware, Lacka- 
wanna and Western Railroad Company was still in open rebel- 
lion against the sovereignty of the State and had absolutely 
refused to render obedience to the new act. It was the only one 
of the trunk lines crossing the State that refused to pay the 
taxes under it. It claimed that a decision of the United States 
Supreme Court, declaring the clause in its old charter exempting 
it from State and local taxation to be a contract between itself 
and the State which the Legislature could not repeal, protected 
it forever against any effort on the part of the State to force it 
to the payment of taxes. The Morris and Essex Railroad, 
which had now become the property of the Delaware, Lacka- 
wanna and Western by perpetual lease, was one of the railroad 
companies that had secured its franchise from one of the Legis- 
latures of the early thirties, when the State was ready to make 
any concessions demanded to tempt enterprises that would assist 
in her development ; and, in dealing with its promoters, as with 
the promoters of other railroads, she had helped it to its feet by 
exempting it from all taxation for the first thirty years of its 
existence, and ^:hereafter from all but a trifling transit duty. 
The Legislature had no idea at the time that it could not at any 



244 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

future day modify these liberal and helpful concessions; the- 
railroad companiea' point that the tax exemptions were of the^ 
vital conditions upon which they had built their roads, and that 
therefore their charters were in the nature of irrepealable con- 
tracts, was a surprise. The State courts had overruled this point 
and held railroad property to be as subject to the taxing powers 
as every other class of property. The Morris and Essex carried 
the finding into the United States Supreme Court, and there the 
final judgment sustaining its irrepealable contract claim that now 
made it so arrogantly defiant of the taxing powers of the State^ 
had been rendered. 

In granting its franchise, however, the State had happily re- 
served an option to condemn at the end of fifty years, which now 
proved the weak point in the company's armor. The year 
when, under this reservation, the State could take possession of 
the company's property at its first cost, was close at hand, and 
Governor Abbett used it as a weapon with enormous effect in 
bringing the railroad company to terms. William H. Corbin^ 
who, representing one of the Union districts, led the battle 
against the company in the Assembly, sprang even a finer tech- 
nical point upon it when he discovered that the United States 
court decision declared only that clause in its charter which 
exempted it from taxation to be irrepealable. The rest of its 
charter was plainly within the compass of legislative action ; 
the State had not lost the right to repeal every other section 
of it. Mr. Corbin began his attack on the road on that line, 
when in 1885 it first evinced a disposition to beard the State 
authorities. 

Its continued defiance of the State's sovereignty led the 
Governor, in his annual message at the opening of the session 
of 1886, to advise the passage of an act forbidding any foreign 
corporation to exercise any corporate act in the State until it 
had filed with the State Comptroller its consent to pay taxes 
as a domestic corporation. The Delaware, Lackawanna and 
Western Railroad Company, which had absorbed the Morris 
and Essex, derived its charter from the State of Pennsylvania, 
and the suggestion of the Governor's message was intended to 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 



245 



cripple it in the transaction of its business over its leased lines 
in New Jersey. In the midst of these movements, rumors 
gained currency that the company had not even paid into the 
State treasury the whole of the pittance which, by its own ad- 
missions, the State could exact from it under its charter. The 
State's tax-bills had been computed on the basis of the com- 
pany's own returns to the State of its taxable assets ; and, while 
the session of 1886 was still young, a joint resolution was 
oifered ordering that an investigation be made into the accuracy 
— the honesty, if you please — of these returns. Assemblyman 
Corbin went to the aid of 

the resolution, and Hud- -^ - 

speth and Besson joined 
with him. Pintard, of 
Monmouth, who de- 
scribed it as an inquisi- 
tion, made a weak oppo- 
sition. The courage of 
the Legislature was not 
^qual to the emergency, 
and the resolution was 
lost by a tie vote. 

The interposition of 
the trial, in impeachment 
proceedings, of a State 
Prison Keeper on charges 
preferred by some of the 
women in his keeping, 

diverted the attention of the Senate from the pending contro- 
versy, and gave the combatants a breathing spell. Neither the 
charge nor the hearing based upon it was of a character to be 
detailed in these pages. As it had not the remotest relation to 
the current of public movements or the smallest influence upon 
them, it is as unnecessary, as it would be offensive, to go over the 
miserable details of the case. It was said that the charge had 
been instigated by reckless party malice, and when the Senators 
oame to declare their verdict their sentiment was divided by the 




George () Vaiiderbilt. 



246 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

party line. Ten of the Democratic Senators found the accused 
official not guilty ; the ten Republican Senators voted him 
guilty. It lay with Senator Vanderbilt, of Mercer, to break 
the tie. His vote with the Republicans sent the official out into 
the world branded with an infamy that could never be wiped out. 
The condemned man was a factional friend of Governor Abbett^ 
and he had availed himself of the opportunities his residence in 
Trenton afforded him to conduct Abbett's battle with the old 
State House regime in their stronghold of Mercer. Vacderbilt 
■was in sympathy with Abbett's party opponents, and he was 
freely criticised, after his vote, as having allowed his factional 
animosities to sway his judgment in weighing up his verdict. 

Friend as he had been counted of the impeached official, Gov- 
ernor Abbett stretched out no hand to save him, nor gave any 
attention to the trial. He was rather engrossed by the struggle 
over the enforcement of the Tax act against the recalcitrant 
railroad company. Legislative functions were suspended, and 
the House was forced to a recess while the impeachment pro- 
ceedings dragged their weary length along, and the Governor 
busied himself in planning a new line of attack upon the 
corporation. 

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company 
had been engaged, for some time prior to the passage of the act, 
in a litigation over the tax-bills due the State under the old ex- 
emption laws ; and it transpired during the course of the litiga- 
tion that, in making return to the State of the taxable assets of its 
leased road, tha Morris and Essex, it had scaled down the value 
of its personal property and equipments from $13,000,000 to 
$3,000,000. And in a special message, read when the Legisla- 
ture came together again in June, Governor Abbett made the 
startling charge that, by thus hiding some of its ratables, the 
company had, for each of twenty year.*, paid to the State $50,000 
less of taxes than the State had a right to receive and that it 
was in arrears to the amount of a round million of dollars. 

When the message had been received a discussion arose as to 
the department to which it should be referred for investigation. 
Hudspeth asked its reference to a special committee of three,. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 247 

but Mr. Corbin's motion carried it into Committee of the Whole. 
There Mr. Corbin made the chief speech in favor of his motion 
to refer the claim to the Attorney- General for prosecution ; but 
Armstrong raised the point that that method of treating the 
matter had already been disposed of in the House, and Assem- 
blyman A. F. R. Martin, of Essex, who was in the chair, sus- 
tained the point. The House finally decided to advance a bill, 
offered by Besson, referring the whole matter to the State Board 
of Assessors, and the bill was passed by a vote of 42 to 9. 
When it reached the Senate, Youngblood tried to amend it, but 
Senators Brinkerhoff and Fish opposed the amendmeat, and the 
bill was passed without a dissenting voice. That brought the 
two-days' special session to its close. 

The Sta^e Board of Assessors found the company wholly un- 
manageable, and the Legislature of 1887 returned to the charge - 
upon it, with Assemblyman William H. Corbin, of Union, in 
command and an air that meant business. He marshaled the 
lines for the support of an act dra^n by Governor Abbett and 
introduced by Assemblyman Thomas F. Noonan, of Hudson, 
authorizing the State officials to proceed to the condemnation of 
the railroad company's property, with the view of taking it out 
of the hands of its stockholders. Assemblyman Corbin gave 
assurances that the State had made an offer to the company that 
if it would surrender its tax exemptions and submit to the tax 
laws, the State would, for her part, surrender her right to repeal 
its charter. The proposition, Mr. Corbin said, had stood for a 
year unaccepted ; the company had even refused to consider it.^ 
These announcements aroused so evident a determination on the 
part of the Legislature to resort to confiscation that the com- 
pany became alarmed, and it sent ex-Governor Bedle, its chief 
counsel, to Trenton to plead for mercy. Governor Bedle made 
a three- days' speech from the Speaker's desk in its behalf before 
the House, in Committee of the Whole, and Mr. Cator and Mr. 
Corbin answered him. 

" It will not do to divert attention from the real object of this 
bill," Mr. Corbin said in one part of his speech, " by pointing 
to small private interests when we have so big a subject to act 



:248 



MODERN BA^TILES OF TRENTON. 



upon. The question is whether we are men enough, whether 
we are broad enough of view, whether there is enough of the 
suggestion of statesmen about us to enable us to rise to the plane 
of this legislation, and to assert the power of the State over all 
property within its boundaries. It is as clear as light that, in 
the nature of things, you cannot make with the sovereign power 
an unchangeable contract ; and yet this railroad company demand 
that we shall forever exempt them from taxes because by an 
unfortunate train of circurasfaaces the exemption the State 
extended as a beneficence, has been forced upon her as a contract. 

The Slate has adopted a 
policy which has re- 
mained in force for fifty 
years, of such liberality 
and generosity towards 
the railroads as almost 
defies example. T do not 
know the State in which 
there has been anything 
like it. The only in- 
stsnxs which at all com- 
pare with it are the in- 
stances of the general 
government making rail- 
road grants for the pur- 
pose of building Western 
roads. And what have 
we received in return for 
it all ? We have built up the railroads of the State, and now 
when they have grown to the stature of giants, we find this one 
ready to throttle up. And this leads me to say that we have been 
generous not only with our own creatures, but with the creatures 
of our sister States. It is not the old Jersey corporations that 
make this trouble. It U only when we have fostered the cor- 
porations of other States that we find these contracts forced to 
the front and fastened upon us with all the power their great 
-capital gives them. It is the Delaware, Lackawanna and West- 




William II. c 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 249 

«rn Railroad, a corporation of Pennsylvania, that is to day 
attempting to take advantage of the generosity extended to a 
feeble home corporation that planned to run a little railroad 
from Morristown to Newark fifty years ago." 

Such arguments as these spurred the Assembly to the per- 
formance of its full duty, and the members were almost unani- 
mously favorable to the bill. Assemblyman Armstrong, of 
Camden, was yet anxious to give the company until May 20th 
to pay its taxes, with the penalty of being dispossessed of its 
property on June 1st for non-compliance, and he moved an 
amendment of that scope. Assemblyman Hudspeth feared that 
any amendment of the bill might cripple it, and the proposition 
was not at that time entertained. But at a subsequent meeting 
Mr. Corbin himself tacked on an amendment providing that if 
the company before June 1st filed a waiver of its special contract 
of exemption the confiscating act should not go into effect. 
These measures brought the defiant corporation to its knees 
before the close of the week, and it eagerly opened up negotia- 
tions with the State. 

The first proposition was to exchange its tax exemptions for 
the State's right to take its property, but Governor Green, who 
took up the battle where Governor Abbett had dropped it, 
exacted more. It was not enough that it should agree to pay 
its taxes under the act of 1884; it must also settle the arrear- 
ages to which Governor Abbett's special message of 1886 had 
called attention. The company made a wry face at this new 
penalty ; but, confronted by the danger of the loss of its prop- 
erty, had nothing to do but yield, and on March 16th Gov- 
ernor Green notified the Legislature that the company would 
pay its taxes for 1885 and 1886 without any further dispute, 
and submit the State's claim for the twenty years of arrearages 
to the arbitration of two men, to be selected, one by itself and 
the other by the State. 

The State named Frederic W. Stevens, a Newark lawyer of 
wide reputation in Chancery matters, as the arbitrator on its 
side, and the railroad company named John F. Dillon, a noted 
^ew York railroad lawyer, on its side. The books of the com- 



250 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

pany were subjected to the most careful scrutiny covering the 
twenty years for which arrearage moneys were claimed, and 
months were spent in the taking of testimony. After the case 
had been submitted on both sides, the arbitrators made fruitless 
attempts to agree, and it was at one time feared that all the 
work and money put upon the case would go for nothing. 
Both were put under pressure, however, and in the end they 
reported that there was a deficiency of a trifle over $300,000 in 
the company's twenty years' payments. The State was inclined 
to believe that Mr. Dillon had overreached Stevens in bringing 
about this agreement, and even after it had been reached, there 
was a" disposition to decline the settlement. The compromise 
was accepted, however; the money was paid over; the company 
settled its bills in a?cordance with the Tax laws, and the last of 
the monopoly-claiming corporations surrendered its irrepealable 
exemptions and bowed to the authority of the Commonwealth. 

This^^fical acceptance, all around, of the new Tax act, prac- 
tically marked the end of the equal tax agitation, and there i* 
ground for the contention that, when the inquisitorial preroga- 
tives of the State's taxing officers in hunting out the taxable 
assets of the railroads, is taken into account on the one hand, 
and the notorious ease with which the taxable personal property 
of the individual taxpayer is hidden from the view of the tax- 
gatherer is taken into account on the other hand, there is sub- 
stantial equality in the distribution of the public tax burden 
between the two classes of taxpayers. The railroads pay a 
smaller rate on all they own ; the individual taxpayer pays a 
higher rate on less than he owns.* 

The meteoric Cator dropped out of sight, in a large degree, 
with the close of the agitation that called him to the scene of 
action. In spite of his brilliancy and eloquence, he had made 
an erratic record in the Legislature and before the people. Just 
as, after having posed as an uncompromising anti- monopolist, 
he had risen from his sick-bed to assist in the passage of a 
Jersey Central Railroad bill, so he had allied himself with the 
Prohibitionists before an election, only to clamor for free rum 

*See Appendix B. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 251 

from his seat in the Assembly. A free-thinker one day, he was 
heard of the next as a figure in Methodist experience meetings. 
He blew hot and blew cold in everything, and shifted his pose 
like a weather-cock, at every turn of the wind. 

The last view his admiring neighbors in Jersey City had of him 
in political life was quite as dramatic as the first view had been. 
The Republicans nominated him for a seat in the Board of Alder- 
men. The Democrats indorsed him, the Anti- Monopoly League 
declared for him, the Prohibitionists wheeled in line for him, 
and he started out with six nominations and with apparently 
what the politicians would call a "walk-over." Two nights 
before election a little handful of his enemies met in conference 
and decided to put Max Salinger in the field as a candidate 
against him. Mr. Salinger went into the fight without a nomi- 
nation of any kind, and was further handicapped by his ina- 
bility to even so much as make his candidacy publicly known 
till the evening before election day. To the surprise of every- 
body, the count of the vote showed that he had beaten Cator,, 
six nominations and all, by an overwhelming majority. 

Mr. Cator subsequently removed to San Francisco, where he 
engaged in the practice of the law. His wife and himself recog- 
nizgd the incompatibility of their tempers, and an amicable sepa- 
ration between them left Mr. Cator free to sue for the hand of a 
milliona re widow, whom he subsequently married. He engaged 
actively in politics, warmly espoused the cause of the laboring- 
man, and quickly made himself one of the most commanding 
figures on the Pacific coast. Twice he was within an ace of 
being sent to represent California in the United States Senate, 
and at this writing there were signs that he might become a 
Populist candidate for President of the United States. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Which, After Eeperring to a Fiery Visitation That Gave Newark 

Hope of Becoming the State Capital, Shows Why Mr. 

Kelsey Didn't Help Blodgett Keach the 

Governorship After All. 



f4|| :^ ^ 'lot imagine now that because in the tracing of the 
7zf0 story of the memorable battle for railroad taxation, 
^»rH^ we have spanned the years between 1884 and 1887, 
nothing else of account transpired. The period was, 
on the contrary, marked by some unusual excitements ; and it 
will be necessary to go back again a year or two to get a view 
of them. The campaign of the fall of 1884 was that in which 
Grover Cleveland was first elected to the Presidency of the 
United States. Though, speaking generally, it was a good 
Democratic year, the Republicans succeeded in gaining control 
of both Houses of the Legislature. The majority in the Senate, 
however, was a narrow one, with a single vote in favor of the 
Republicans. The caucus plan was to elect Senator Griggs, of 
Passaic, to the Presidency, but Abram V. Schenck, of Middle- 
sex, was ambitious for the honor ; and Youngblood, who was 
disaffected towards Griggs, joined with the Democrats and put 
the elderly Middlesex Senator in the chair for the session. 

The Republican press denounced both Youngblood and 
Schenck for having refused to abide the issue of the caucus, and 
charged that Mr. Schenck had entered into a deal with the Gov- 
ernor by which, in return for the Democratic support that had 
given him his position, he was to assist the Democrats in con- 
firming the Governor's nominees for State offices. This explana- 
tion of Mr. Schenck's election was in a measure discounted by 
the fact that the relations between Mr. Youngblood and Gov- 
ernor Abbett had been badly strained for some time past, and 
(252) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 25a- 

Youngblood had in the Senate the year before even accused the 
Governor of having insulted him. The presence of Mr. Schenck 
in the chair was a constant source of irritation to the Republi- 
cans, and there was much friction between his friends and Mr.. 
Griggs's friends all through the session. 

The majority in the House was much stronger, and E. Ambler 
Armstrong was made Speaker. 

The Republican plan was to denude the Governor of as many 
of his appointing prerogatives as could be taken from him, and 
to vest the joint meeting, which was Republican, with them. 
Some of their partisan bills went through both Houses without 
much trouble, but the unfavorable attitude of President Schenck. 
prevented the passage of the more aggressive of them, 

A notable feature of the eession was the attempt of the Balti- 
more and Ohio Railroad Company to secure legislation looking 
towards the construction of a bridge over the Kill von Kull. 
The company had arranged to run its trains over the kills to 
Staten Island, and complete its connection with New York by 
ferry from the island. The State made opposition to the scheme 
and the bill the company had prepared failed of adoption. 

Just as the Houses were getting ready to adjourn for the ses- 
sion all the front part of the capitol building was destroyed by 
fire, and the incident projected an unexpected discussion as to 
the location of the Slate Capital. Assemblyman Keasbey, son 
of United States District Attorney Keasbey, who then repre- 
sented one of the Essex county districts in the Chamber, made 
the fire the pretext for the 'introduction of a bill naming New- 
ark as the capital city of the State, and a fierce strife was waged 
for many weeks over its acceptance or rejection. The Trenton 
folks would not, of course, listen to a proposition for a change 
calculated to rob their city of its only distinction, while Newark, 
as the most populous, enterprising and central city in the State, 
made a strong pull in its own behalf. At a public meeting held 
in Newark Senator Fish, ex- Judge J. Frank Fort, Harrison 
Van Duyne, Assemblyman R. Wayne Parker, Cortlandt Parker, 
ex- Congressman George A. Halsey, Robert H. Ballantine, Wil- 
liam Clark, Theodore Macknett, Edward Balbach, Jr., Thomas^ 



254 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

B. Peddie, Elisha B. Gaddis, Gardner R. Colby, George J. 
Ferry, James Smith, Jr., John Blake, George B. Jenkinson and 
James W. Miller were appointed a' committee to urge Newark's 
claims upon the Legislature. The committee was a strong and 
representative one. Elisha B. Gaddis was a wholesale grocer of 
large wealth, and a big factor among the Republicans of Essex 
county. Ballantine was a millionaire brewer. Clark was of 
the great cotton-spinning firm of world-wide reputation. Bal- 
bach was one of the chief gold refiners in the country, of enough 
importance politically to be a Democratic nominee for Congress. 
Smith was just starting out for the United States Senate. Ferry 
was a conspicuous worker in the Methodist church, and after- 
wards Mayor of Orange for many years. Colby, an East Orange 
magnate, had been talked of as a gubernatorial possibility. 
Peddie and Blake had been Members of Congress, and Jenkin- 
son was a successful business man of Newark. 

The movement was weakened, however, by the understanding 
that ex-Secretary Frelinghuysen and ex-Sheriff William Wright 
and some other equally well-known Newark residents were op- 
posed to it. Cortlandt Parker finally declined to serve on the 
committee. Mr. Smith threw cold water on the project by ex- 
pressing his doubt as to the ability of the city, because of her 
financial condition at that time, to contribute as she ought to the 
expense that the change would entail upon her. The support 
eventually simmered down to Senator Fish and Judge Fort, who 
were looked upon as its only busy promoters. 

When Mr. Keasbey's bill made its re- appearance in the House 
from the mill of the committee, under rather unfavorable cir- 
cumstances. Chairman Jewett and the majority of the committee 
reported it adversely. Keasbey tried to save it with a minority 
report. The inimitable Harrigan made a droll speech that 
pleased Keasbey and the House, and succeeded finally in getting 
it upon the calendar. When it came up for second reading its 
chances were again jeopardized by the attempt of a lot of other 
cities to secure recognition. Mr. Corbin, of Union, did not see 
why Elizabeth should be slighted, and he wanted it amended so 
that the commission named in the bill might be left free to select 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 255 

either Newark or Elizabeth. One of the conditions of removal 
laid down in a companion bill was that the new capital city, if 
a change were made, should contribute $500,000 towards the 
new State House, which aiforded Mr. Caminade, of Trenton, an 
opportunity to make cruel sport of Elizabeth's bankruptcy. He 
wanted to know of Corbin " where Elizabeth would get that 
$500,000," and expressed his doubts as to her ability to raise 
$500. Assemblyman Wayne Parker made a beautiful extem- 
poraneous speech in Newark's behalf during the progress of the 
discussion, and Franklin Murphy, another of the bright mem- 
bers of the Essex delegation, made another speech of the same 
tenor. It met the opposition of rollicking " Ben " Braker, of 
Camden, and of William H. Grant, of Monmouth ; and Cami- 
nade made a fiery speech against it, and it was defeated by a 
vote of 27 to 25. 

Trenton drew a long sigh of relief, and prepar«;d to put on 
the saved State building the handsome front that now adorns it, 
while the people of the State prepared to select a new master 
for it. 

The canvass of 1886 brought the Slate House managers and 
Governor Abbett's wing of the party into conflict for the last 
time. It was specially notable from the political standpoint 
because it resulted in strained relations between Secretary of 
State Kelsey and ex- Senator Henry S. Little, who were the sur- 
viving lights of the State House autocracy. The passage and 
enforcement of the new railroad tax law had embittered the 
railroad men in the party against Governor Abbett and his 
friends, and there was a very natural desire on the part of some 
of the railroads whose tax- bills had been largely increased to 
overthrow the act. Mr. Abbett's term as Governor was to 
expire in the following January, and there was opportunity in 
the naming of his successor for them to secure a powerful friend 
at court ; and, as the Jersey Central Railroad had been particu- 
larly conspicuous in contesting the act, it seemed to be meet and 
proper to them that the political opposition to the Tax Act should 
be reflected in the choice of a Jersey Central official or one in 
sympathy with the Jersey Central interests, for Governor. 



256 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Rufus Blodgett, the Superintendent of the New York and 
Long Branch Railroad, which was one of the Jersey Central's 
branches, had, while in the Assembly, won a reputation for him- 
self as an even-headed public man with some shrewdness as a 
politician. During his first year of service as the member from 
Ocean (Blodgett served in 1878, 1879 and 1880), he had com- 
mended himself to Mr. Kelsey by shielding him from persecu- 
tion under cover of an investigation which some of Mr. Kelsey'& 
factional enemies bad set on foot against him. After his three 
years' service in the Assembly, he had come within an ace of 
carrying the Republican county of Ocean for the Democrats as 
their candidate for State Senator. Altogether he was looked 
upon as meeting the requirements as the railroad candidate for 
the Democratic nomination for the Governorship, and a strong 
combination was made to put him at the head of the ticket. 

His friends realized that they had made a good stroke for him 
when they secured Mr. Kelsey 's promise to assist them. Mr. 
Kelsey 's term as Secretary of State was about to expire, and he 
was anxious to be re-appointed. Senator McPhersou, who was 
certain to be a decisive factor in selecting the nominee if the 
other faction of the party were allowed to control the conven- 
tion, was his old-time enemy. Mr. Kelsey had recently given 
him fresh occasion for ill-feeling by making known the sub- 
stance of a conversation between the Senator and General Sewell, 
which an eavesdropper in a Philadelphia hotel claimed to have 
overheard. Its publication right on the eve of the guberna- 
torial convention was made with the evident purpose of destroy- 
ing Senator McPherson's influence in the party and preventing 
him from naming the new gubernatorial candidate. 

Mr. McPherson's friends had held a conference at some place 
in New York, and had agreed upon Robert 8. Green, of Eliza- 
beth, who, as a candidate for Congress, had recovered the Third 
district for the Democrats, after Miles Ross, in spite of his com- 
manding position as leader there, had been defeated by John 
Kean, Jr. Mr. Kelsey took it for granted that if Green were 
nominated through Senator McPherson's influence, he would 
also, through Senator McPherson's influence, decline to renomi- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 257 



nate him as Secretary of State, and he was quite ready to join 
hands with Blodgett in a contest against Green. Mr. Kelsey 
had never gone into a battle without the aid and countenance of 
ex- Senator Little, and he sought that gentleman at his home in 
Matawan and urgei him to assist in the fight. Having gone 
out of the State House, and regarding himself as measurably 
out of politics, Mr. Little was not disposed to fake any part in 
the controversy, but Mr. Kelsey argued the point eloquently, 
and finally persuaded him not only to aid with his influence 
but also to contribute his check for $5,000 to the success of the 
anti- Green crusade. The rivalry between the two factions was 
so strong and every inch of ground was so bitterly contested, 
that both were willing to see the State convention deferred till 
the latest possible moment ; and neither side objected when the 
State Committee fixed a day toward the close of September for 
its assembling. 

When the delegates reached Trenton, on the night before the 
designated day, Green's friends were more than discomfited to 
see that Blodgett's nomination would be the likely outcome of 
their deliberations. Senator McPherson, Governor Abbett, 
Miles Ross and ex- Congressman Pidcock were on hand strain- 
ing every nerve to destroy the railroad man's lead, but all their 
work seemed to make no impression. There was but one way 
to compass his defeat — that was by placing an enemy of Blodgett 
in the chair at convention hall — one who had the skill, the nerve 
and the courage to hold it at bay, as Abbett had held the Cleve- 
land Convention at bay, till it gave up its battle against his 
stronger will. 

Where was this dauntless man to be found ? And how was 
he to be placed over the convention ? It was the province of 
the State Committee to name the temporary officers of the con- 
vention, and the State Committee was, to a large extent, still at 
the service of the old State House managers. Blodgett himself 
was its head. It looked like a hopeless struggle; but noses 
were carefully counted, and in the privacy of the committee's 
meeting-room the two factions locked horns for the decisive en- 
gagement of the campaign. The Green contingent went to the 

17 



258 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

front with a demand for the selection of Allan L. McDermott 
for the fateful chairmanship. The Blodgett wing urged the 
selection of Mr. Blodgett himself. Perhaps they hoped to see 
the delegates surge at his feet as they had once seen them cluster 
at Abbett's. On the vote there was a tie, with Samuel T. Smith, 
■the committeeman from Sussex, absent. Inquiries for Smith 
aroused inquiries for Mr. Kelsey, because Kelsey was the con- 
trolling factor in Sussex and Smith owed his seat on the com- 
mittee to his influence. But no one could find Mr. Kelsey. 
Where was he? And why hadn't he made sure of Smith's 
presence at a gathering where his vote was of such importance 
in a campaign of Mr. Kelsey 's own inspiration ? 

No one knew. The town was scoured for him ; all the 
couriers came back panting and perspiring, but without tidings. 
Mr. Little, who would never have gone into the canvass but for 
his associate's persuasive tongue, was in an especially anxious 
irame of mind. He hastened with rising choler from one to 
the other of Mr. Kelsey's haunts, but in none had the much- 
sought Secretary been seen. The free use of the wire brought 
information, however, that the missing committeeman was still 
at his home in distant Sussex. In the belief that when he ar- 
rived he would break the tie in McDermott's favor, the Green 
men telegraphed to Jersey City, directing that a special train be 
hurried up into the Sussex hills to whirl him down to Trenton, 
and the State Committee hung around till four o'clock in the 
morning to await his arrival. 

And when he stepped in, smiling and bowing — Mr. Smith 
was a terribly polite little gentleman with iron- gray hair and 
clerical face and keen black eyes and mutton-chop side whiskers 
— he was not ready to vote for McDermott ; he was not ready 
to vote for Blodgett ; in fact, he had a man of his own choice 
to urge upon his astonished fellows. 

Heigho ! That was significant. Was Mr. Kelsey wavering 
in his loyalty to Blodgett that this close political ally of his was 
not ready to spring to Blodgett's rescue? Were Kelsey's disap- 
pearance and the indecision of this personal representative of 
his parts of one game ? Could it be possible that Smith held 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 259 

.^loof from either side, while his chieftain was bargainiog in 
secret with his enemies? "Staflf" Little's choler rose higher 
and beads of anxious perspiration stood on his forehead as he 
dashed out to make another fruitless hunt for his ally and ask 
of him what it all meant. Meanwhile, the committee flopped 
around and finally hit upon ex- Congressman " Charley " Haight. 
Mr. Haight was the representative of the Abbett wing of the 
party. He was quite as obnoxious to Blodgett as McDermott 
was. Blodgett declared Haight's selection to be a personal af- 
front, and put his request for a reconsideration of the nomina- 
tion on such strong personal grounds that, out of deference to 
him, the committee recalled it, and finally agreed upon John W. 
Wescott, of Camden. 

After Blodgett had, as Chairman of the State Committee, 
called the State Convention to order in Taylor Opera House, 
Judge Wescott took the chair and conducted the proceedings 
through the temporary organization phase. Following the usual 
precedent, a committee to name the permanent oflQcers was 
appointed, and during the recess the struggle that had kept the 
State Committee in session till almost daylight was entered upon 
anew. The Blodgett party were anxious to make Orestes Cleve- 
land the permanent Chairman ; the Green men still insisted 
upon McDermott. The battle was a brief one. By the votes 
of fifteen of the twenty-one members of the committee, McDer- 
mott was named. The observable feature of the contest in the 
Organization! Committee was the fact that the delegates over 
whom Mr. Kelsey's iEfluence was supposed to be supreme did 
not line up for Orestes Cleveland. McDermott's speech in 
accepting the responsibilities of the chair was an attack on the 
railroad corporations, and he gave it a particularly personal turn 
by remarking that the New Jersey Central and the New York 
and Long^Branch Railroads had not paid a cent into the State 
treasury for three years. When nominations were declared in 
order, Beckwith, of Atlantic, was the first who had an oppor- 
tunity on the alphabetical roll-call of the counties to respond 
with a name. He presented that of Green. Burlington county 
came forward with Hendrickson and Blodgett; Camden put 




Robert S. Green. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 261 

forward the name of Wescott ; Cape May responded with John 
Hopper; Essex with John McGregor of Newark, David C. 
Dodd of Orange, and Andrew Albright of Newark. Passaic broke 
into a deafening tumult over contesting delegations, and Wm. D. 
Daly, of Jersey City, stirred up a riot when, in response to the 
call for Hudson, he answered with Green's name. A dozen of 
the Hudson delegates sprang to their feet to declare that the 
county was not unanimous for the Third district Congressman. 
Monmouth put Blodgett in formal nomination ; Morris honored 
Augustus W. Cutler with its preference. 

And the roll-call for the tallying the vote was entered upon 
at once. Mr. McDermott knew that the vote of the Hudson 
delegation was the vital and essential one ; and, the Hudson men 
having, after their county chairman had announced it for Green, 
sprung to their feet in protest, he was furnished with a pretext 
for passing it and giving its members an opportunity to agree 
among themselves while the roll-call of the other counties was 
being completed. The Blodgett men listened to the response 
from the delegations representing the counties where Mr. Kel- 
sey's influence was most active with mingled surprise and 
indignation. One after the other, called upon to announce its 
choice, was marked down in the Green column. Hudson was 
still divided and warring ; its vote, thrown solidly to Blodgett, 
would have decided the battle in his favor. While it was busy 
with its contentions, the Essex delegation yielded to the pressure 
to which it was subjected. The three favored sons whom it had 
put in nomination had no chance of carrying the convention, 
and James F. Connelly, the Chairman of the delegation, aroused 
the enthusiasm of the Green men by the announcement that he 
had been instructed to cast the one hundred or more votes of 
the delegation for Green. The coup was completed when the 
votes of both the Passaic delegations were tallied up for the 
Union county man. The Blodgett contingent, wild with rage 
and disappointment, jumped to their feet with noisy protests. 
But McDermott insisted that the tally showed a majority for 
Green, and formally announced him as the candidate of the 
convention. The moment he made the declaration, he dropped 



262 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

his gavel on the table, and, declaring the convention adjourned 
"without date, prevented the Blodgett men from appealing from 
his decision and securing a revision of the tally figures. 

The rest of the story of the convention fight is that, on the 
night before the convention, the McPherson party had discov- 
ered that, with the delegates whom Mr. Kelsey could control, 
Mr. Blodgett was sure to secure the nomination. Mr. Kelsey 
had been sought by Supreme Court Clerk Lee early in the even- 
ing and taken to Mr. Lee's house. Mr. Lee was of the Mc- 
Pherson clan, and, anxious to see Green nominated, he had sum- 
moned to his house every Democratic leader who could have 
any influence with Mr. Kelsey, and they had labored through 
half the night with the Secretary in Green's favor. He was 
reluctant to listen, but they made him. He considered what 
would become of him in the event of Green's election. Wouldn't 
he be deposed from the handsome State office he held? Surely, 
after the bitter rivalries of years, culminating in the publication 
of the overheard Philadelphia hotel interview, McPherson would 
never permit Green to re-appoint him to the State Secretaryship l 
The throng of his friends re-assured him. They put themselves 
under bonds to him to make McPherson consent, unwilling as 
he would doubtless be. And Mr. Kelsey finally yielded to their 
persuasions, and directed the delegates who were responsive to 
his call to fall in line for the Union county candidate. 

There was always afterwards a speaking acquaintance between 
Mr. Kelsey and Mr. Little, but it was the end of the political 
alliance that had existed between them for many years. By 
dissolving their political ties the incident disintegrated the State 
House autocracy forever and paved the way for the complete 
ascendency which the other wing of the party maintained to the 
end of the period covered by this narrative. Mr. Kelsey be- 
came identified — never closely, however — with the new rulers,. 
while Mr. Little, unrelenting to the end, kept up his bitter war- 
fare upon them. Every now and then he amused himself by 
riding into their camp, like a lone bandit — armed to the teeth 
with charge and innuendo — and spreading dismay and terror by 
his presence. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 263 

The Republican convention met a week later, with ex-Senator 
Cattell as temporary Chairman and William Walter Phelps aa 
permanent Chairman. Gardner R. Colby, of East Orange, and 
Benjamin F. Howey, who had carried the strongly Democratic 
Fourth district for Congress, were the chief competitors for the 
nomination. General Duncan, of Bergen, and Major Carl Lentz, 
of Essex, made speeches in favor of Colby ; Charles Starr, of 
Gloucester, made the nominating speech for Howey. On the 
first roll-call Howey had 293 out of 294 votes needed for his 
nomination. General Sewell added Camden's vote, and Mr. 
Phelps formally declared Howey the choice of the convention. 
The nomination was regarded as a strong one at the start, bat 
the Democrats made a hustling canvass for Green and came out. 
with flying colors. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

Which, if it Ai^ything Like Adequately Describes the Defeat of 

Governor Abbett's First Attempt to Reach tee Tnited 

States Senatorship, Must be an Exciting One. 




K. ABBETT'S term as Governor ended in January, 
1887. The term of General Sewell as United States 
Senator was to end in the following March. Daring 
all of his service in the gubernatorial chair it had 
been known of all men that Governor Abbett aspired to succeed 
the Genera], and by popular acclaim the dignity he sought was 
voted to him as the reward of his efforts, successful in both 
directions, to free the State from the lien of the monopoly 
exemptions, and keep her people from the burden of a State 
tax. The Democratic canvass for new State Senators and new 
members of Assembly had been made in the preceding fall all 
over the State with the understanding that if the joint conven- 
tion of the two Houses were Democratic, Mr. Abbett was to be 
promoted to the United States Senate. It was understood 
beyond'that, that he was to have the nomination of his party 
caucus wholly as a tribute to his skill as a statesman and with- 
out forcing him to resort to any of the devious devices by which 
United States Senatorships are too often won. But the moment 
the results of the election became known it was seen that com- 
plications that might keep the people's gift from his hands were 
probable, and that nothing but the shrewdest management on 
his part could save it to him. 

The new Senate was to consist of twelve Republicans and 
nine Democrats. In the House there were thirty Democrats, 
twenty- seven Republicans, and two men, Donohue and Carroll, 
elected in Passaic districts by the joint efforts of the Democrats 
and the Labor men. Thus fifty-nine seats were accounted for. 
(264) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 265 



The sLxtieth belonged to the representative of the Second dis- 
trict of Mercer county. The candidates there had been Josiah 
Jones, on behalf of the Republicans, and Frederick Walter, on 
behalf of the Democrats. The returns, as sent in on election 
night and subsequently confirmed by the Board of Canvassers, 
had shown for Walter a majority of two over Jones, and the 
canvassers had given him the certificate of election. Jones 
claimed that there had been an error in the tally of the votes 
and he applied to the Supreme Court for a recount. There were 
gains and losses on both sides, and at the end of it, it was seen 
that both had polled the same number of votes. Chief Justice 
Beasley declared a tie and refused to grant the court's commis- 
sion to either of the candidates. That did not, however, disarm 
Mr. Walter. He still held the certificate the canvassers had 
given him for such use as he could make of it, and it was a fore- 
gone conclusion that he would present it to the House and ask 
admission to his seat. 

If Walter were allowed to act as a member, his vote would 
make the thirty-first and controlling Democratic vote in the 
Assembly, and with the nine Democrats in the Senate there 
were forty Democratic votes on JDint ballot. The Republicans, 
with twenty-seven Assemblymen and twelve Senators, were able 
to muster thirty- nine votes in joint meeting. Neither party 
had the forty-one votes rf quired to control the joint meeting 
and elect a Serator, and the two Labor- Democrats from Paterson 
held the balance of power between them. Their alliance with 
the Republicans would give the Republicans the forty-one votes ; 
if they i Dined themselves with the Democrats, the Democrats 
would have forty-two. Both of them were therefore eagerly 
sought by both of the parties for expressions of their sentiments. 
They answered that, having been elected as Labor men, they were 
under no obligation to either of the big parties, and that they 
were at liberty to vote in the senatorial joint meeting as they 
pleased. The necessary implication was that they would hold 
themselves aloof, and Governor Abbett's friends were very far 
from securing from them assurances of their support. 



266 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

With forty Democratic votes in the joint meeting assured, 
Governor Abbett's friends assumed that but one more was 
needed to capture the Senatorship for him. They had heard 
rumors that there would be opposition to him in the caucus, but 
they knew that he had the majority of the votes there, and they 
took it for granted that the opposing Democrats would be bound 
by the action of the caucus ; and there was a mighty struggle 
between the two parties for more votes. Soon after the election 
rumors reached Trenton that the returns in the Third district of 
Camden county were to be attacked in Governor Abbett's in- 
terest. George T. Haines had been the Republican candidate 
for the Assembly there, and Henry Turley the Democratic can- 
didate. The local Board of Canvassers had declared Mr. Haines 
elected by forty-two majority and given him the certificate of 
election. Turley claimed that a recount of the votes would 
show that he had beaten Haines, and upon his application Jus- 
tice Joel Parker conducted it. The reviewed ballots found in 
the box in which the people of Center township had voted and 
in another box in which the people of Waterford township had 
voted disclosed marked variations in Turley 's favor from the 
tallied returns, and Justice Parker allowing them, revoked 
Haines' certificate of "election and placed the court's certificate 
in Turley's hands. The admission of Turley to his seat would 
reduce the Republican vote in joint meeting to thirty-eight and 
advance the Democratic vote to the needed forty-one. 

The Republicans loudly insisted that the vote changes noted 
in Center and Waterford had been manipulated after the elec- 
tion, in Abbett's interest, by some one who had access to the 
boxes. At an investigation subsequently set on foot, it was- 
sworn that the returns had been carefully canvassed on election 
night, correctly tallied and not disputed ; that just enough ballots 
had been subsequently changed by the striking of Haines' name 
from them and the writing of Turley's name as a substitute 
upon them, to make up the diflfereoce upon which Judge Parker 
had reversed the result. The Republicans insisted that the 
marks upon the ballots showed that they had been changed after 
the count, while upon the string, and that Turley's name on all 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 267 

the changed ballots was in the same handwriting. Corrobo- 
rating these intimations of fraud was the presence at the inves- 
tigation of the voters in the two townships who testified that 
they had cast their ballots for Haines, and their number was 
precisely equal to the number of ballots that had originally been 
counted for Haines by the two election boards. The inquiry had 
a sensational culmination, when a locksmith named Chambley, 
from Philadelphia, was forced to admit that, one dark and stormy 
night soon after the election, he had been hired by some men to 
go to a distant town in New Jersey ; that they carried him to a 
school-house where there was a ballot-box, and that he had 
opened it so that they could get into it. 

As the time for the opening of the legislative session ap- 
proached, rumors multiplied that even if the Abbett managers 
succeeded in seating Walter and Turley, they would have diffi- 
culty in holding the forty-one Democratic votes. The Gov- 
ernor's arch enemy, ex-Senator Little, had been busy among the 
Monmouth members, and it began to be noised around that Dr. 
Chattle, the Prohibition Senator from that county, and young 
Mr. Throckmorton, who represented one of the districts from it 
in the Assembly, were prepared to defy the caucus. William 
H. Kays, an influential factor in Sussex county politics and 
another bitter foe of the Governor's, had succeeded, too, in 
weakening the loyalty of Senator McBride and the bad-eyed 
Kinney, the Assemblyman from that county. It was the com- 
mon anticipation that if Abbett failed in the election. General 
Sewell would win the prize again, and Democratic Senator 
Chase, of Middlesex, who was in the employ of the Pennsyl- 
vania Railroad Company at South Amboy, was said to be ready 
to give him whatever assistance he could without making too 
serious a break from his party. 

There were just as ominous rumblings of discontent among 
the Republicans concerning General Sewell's candidacy. Among 
the Republicans elected to the House was William H. Corbin,. 
the keen-witted and scholarly lawyer from Elizabeth, who had 
given Governor Abbett such valuable assistance in his struggle 
with the Morris and Essex Railroad Company. Corbin was 



268 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

one of the best-equipped legislators that ever sat in the Assem- 
bly, and his talents gave him a commanding influence among his 
fellow- members. He looked upon General Sewell as a leader 
whose ways were not always along the most popular roads. 
General Sewell's friends intimated that Mr. Corbin's cynical 
views were due to the failure of the General to assist him to 
reach the Speakership in 1886, but Mr. Corbin's friends refused 
to believe that General Sewell had taken a hand in that fight 
against him ; and Corbin's belief that Sewell was responsible for 
more than one party defeat was popularly accepted as the expla- 
nation of his refusal to favor Sewell's re- election to the United 
States Senate. Mr. Corbin emphasized his antagonism to the 
Camden chieftain by refusing to go into a formal caucus that he 
knew beforehand would put the General in nomination. He 
was, however, in frequent conference with his Republican col- 
leagues, and was ready to aid them in any movement to defeat 
Abbett with some one else than Sewell. Standing with Mr. 
Corbin in his opposition to General Sewell were Assemblyman 
Philip Young, of Camden, whose constituents had pledged him 
when they nominated him not to vote for Sewell, and Assembly- 
man Thomas H. Hawkins, of Cumberland. 

The complicatioES-on both sides became more numerous as 
the hour for the meeting of the Houses approached. Assem- 
blyman Wolverton, of Hunterdon, had been led to believe that 
the Abbett influence in the Democratic caucus would be exerted 
in behalf of his promotion to the Speakership, and he was 
chagrined and disappointed when he saw them bend all their 
efforts to the choice of Hudspeth, of Hudson. His Hunterdon 
colleague, John C. Arnwine, who had been his warm champion 
in the contest, shared his disappointment with him. Assem- 
blyman Baird, an herb doctor and compounder of patent medi- 
cines, who represented one of the Warren districts, had also set 
his eye upon the Speakership, and he found in the defeat of his 
ambition a motive for deserting his party's standards. He and 
Wolverton and Arnwine and the two Paterson Labor men 
broke from the Democratic caucus in high dudgeon when 
Hudspeth was made its candidate for the House Speakership, 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 269- 



and offered their services to the twenty- six Republicans who 
were in conference at the same time in the Senate Chamber. 
Glad to assist any movement that looked to the defeat of the 
Abbett programme, the Republicans readily assented to take 
Baird as their candidate for Speaker, and in less than half an 
hour a slate had been made up for the organization of the 
Assembly with a combination of anti- Abbett Democrats and 
Republicans to fill the offices in the Chamber. Besides Baird for 
Speaker, the Democrats also captured the Clerkship for Joseph 
Atkinson, a Newark editor, the Sergeant- at- Arms for the noto- 
rious and irrepressible Terry McDonald. The Republicans made 
the diminutive Herbert Potts Reading Clerk, and secured minor 
places for others of their faith. There were thirty-one votes in 
this combination — a majority of the House membership— and 
when they had completed their organization ticket they marched 
to the Assembly Chamber and demanded admission. 

The Democratic members being still in caucus, the doors were 
barred ; but when one of the doorkeepers drew the bolt to see 
who was outside, they forced their way in and insisted upon 
being given possession of the room. Assemblyman Frank M. 
McDermit, of Essex, sat at the Clerk's desk and announced 
his purpose of holding it against all comers. He was of stalwart 
build, as broad as he was long, one whom nothing could daunt, 
and no one was disposed to undertake to dislodge him. A riot 
was imminent, and Lieutenant Lane, Sergeant Sweeney and 
Patrolman Pilger, of the local police, were called in lo prevent 
disturbances. The Republicans and their allies, leaving the 
Democrats in possession of the main hall, flocked into the 
Speaker's room behind, and through the windows admitted those 
whom they had selected to be officers of the House and scores 
of fighting partisans whom they expected to aid them in taking 
possession of the Chamber. Trenton never witnessed such a 
scene of excitement as supervened when the Republican cohorts 
rushed in from the Speaker's room to carry out their programme. 
Baird was declared elected to the Speakership amid an awful 
clamor, and there were half a dozen affrays around the Speaker's 
desk when he and his fellow-officers approached it. Beckwith,. 



270 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of Atlantic, loud mouthed and combative though under size, 
who had been billed by the Abbett faction to take the chair as 
temporary Chairman, undertook to keep Baird out of it by 
force, and even after Baird had ascended the dais in spite of all 
the opposition, he broke the gavel before he had reduced the 
turbulent crowd to even a semblance of order. 

The next morning Assemblymen Frank M. McDermit and 
Michael T. Barrett, both of Essex and both Democrats, ob- 
served that neither Walter's nor Turley's names had been en- 
rolled, and a fresh tumult ensued. McDermit and John P. 
Feeney, a Hudson Democrat, persuaded Clerk Atkinson to place 
the roll parchment in their hands for inspection. Their purpose 
in opening it to receive the signatures of the two excluded mem- 
bers became apparent a few minutes later, and a struggle between 
Atkinson and them ensued for its possession. Atkinson suc- 
ceeded in wresting it from their grasp before they had carried 
out their design, but in the affray it had been twisted into the 
shape of a corkscrew, and in that condition remains to this day 
as a memento of the excitement. 

Hudspeth, when quiet was restored, moved that the oath be 
administered to Turley. Corbin was on his feet in an instant 
to protest that Turley's path to his seat was paved with fraud, 
and the dark-visaged Armstrong, of Camden, argued against the 
motion, too. The crowd listened to the responses of the mem- 
bers with bated breath. A great cheer for the Knights of Labor 
shook the building when Donohue voted for the motion. Car- 
roll's vote in the same direction evoked another whirlwind of 
Democratic applause. The motion had been carried by a vote 
of 30 to 28. An angry crowd of anti-Abbett men surrounded 
the desks of the two Labor Assemblymen, and roundly de- 
nounced them. The circumstance provoked Donohue to a 
speech, in which he declared himself a Democrat of the JefFer- 
sonian stripe, and a Republican of the Lincoln stripe, and, bound 
by no obligations to either party, he asserted his right to vote as 
his independent judgment advised him. Turley had scarcely 
been sworn before Walter was permitted to sign the roll. 

The Senate had not yet organized. It had met on the first 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 271 

•day and, without swearing in any of the newly- elected Senators, 
had adjourned for a week at a time. Its Republican majority 
stood aloof awaiting the developments of the Assembly contests. 
They had watched with special interest the movements which 
resulted in the seating of Turley and Walter, and when that 
had been accomplished they still stood aloof to watch the un- 
folding of the rest of the Democratic programme. Not all of 
the Republican leaders were, however, satisfied with this inac- 
tion, and their pressure led to a conference toward the close of 
January in Senator Cranmer's room. 

Chief among the conferees were United States Senator Sewell, 
ex- Congressman George A. Halsey, of Newark, Garret A. 
Hobart, the Republican leader in Passaic, and ex- United States 
Senator Alexander G. Cattell. General Sewell called attention 
to the fact that the Democrats had in contemplation, besides the 
contests in the Camden and Mercer districts, the unseating of 
Peck of Essex, Hawkins of Cumberland, Doron of Passaic, and 
Ackerman of Bergen, and he inveighed against the wisdom of 
organizing until the Democrats had given assurances that these 
gentlemen should not be disturbed. Senators Griggs, Thomp- 
son and Fish, on the other hand, were warmly in favor of im- 
mediate organization. Notwithstanding their pressure, the 
Senate did not organize until a week later. 

Meanwhile the time fixed by the United States statute for the 
assembling of the two Houses in joint convention to choose a 
United States Senator had rolled around, and the Assembly held 
a semblance of a joint meeting with the Democratic minority 
of the Senate. The only formal candidate before them 
was Governor Abbett, who had been named as the Democratic 
caucus nominee. Throckmorton seized the opportunity to defy 
the caucus at a time when it could not do much harm. He 
said, in an address which he made at his desk, that the time had 
not yet arrived when he considered himself committed as to his 
choice for the distinction, nor would he be committed by others 
until his own judgment dictated to him what was for the best 
interests of the party ; and for the purpose of showing his dis- 
sent from the action of the party, which had made Abbett the 



272 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

nominee, he put ex-Governor Joseph D. Bedle in formal nomi- 
nation. Of the thirty-nine Democrats in the meeting, Abbett 
received the votes of thirty-eight; Throckmorton's alone was 
cast for Bedle. 

The last day of January had been reached before the Senate 
organization was effected. Frederick S. Fish was made Presi- 
dent and Richard B Reading was chosen to sit at the Secretary's 
desk. It was two weeks later when the Republicans succeeded 
in holding their joint caucus. General Sewell had a vast pre- 
ponderance among them, and was made the party's candidate 
against Abbett. But Assemblymen Corbin, Young and Haw- 
kins withdrew from the caucus. Assemblymen Hill, of Essex, 
and Chamberlain, of Union, were also indisposed to accept 
Sewell's candidacy, but they were finally persuaded to act with 
their party colleagues. 

A second joint Democratic caucus was held the same night. 
Senators Chattle and Chase, and Assemblymen Kinney and 
Peck, were conspicuous by their absence. Kinney was said 
to be in Philadelphia, in communication with the Republicans, 
and was roundly abused by his disappointed fellow- Democrats 
as the meanest kind of a traitor. Governor Abbett was again 
made the choice of the caucus, but these defections from the 
camp only served to emphasize the embarrassments that attended 
his candidacy. 

The first attempt to hold a joint meeting of the regularly- 
organized Houses was made on the following day (Tuesday, the 
15th), and the Republicans thought they had everything pre- 
pared for Abbett's defeat. When the Democrats had counted 
noses, before going to the Assembly Chamber, they discovered 
that three of their members were absent and suspected that 
their absence had been arranged by their Republican rivale. 
They abstained, therefore, from proceeding to the joint meeting, 
and when President Fish called for order in the Assembly 
Chamber, Speaker Baird was the only Democratic Assemblyman 
in attendance. The Republicans were all there — Carroll and 
Donohue, the two Paterson Labor men, with them. President 
Fish held the joint meeting open for an hour and a half, to 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 273 

await the presence of the other members, and then, after a pro- 
test had been entered against their absence, declared the meeting 
adjourned for the day. The Democrats, having meanwhile cor- 
ralled the absent three, flocked into the Chamber just as the 
joint meeting rose, and insisted upon being recorded as present, 
but President Fish told them that it was too late. 

When the joint meeting assembled the following day, a bitter 
and exciting controversy between the spokesmen of the two par- 
ties over the participation of Assemblymen Turley and Walter 
in the proceedings delayed the taking of a ballot. The floor, 
aisles and galleries of the Chamber were packed to suffoca- 
tion, and, as every man in the crowd was a partisan, the stormy 
scenes that ensued almost culminated in a riot. Senator Griggs, 
of Passaic, precipitated the controversy by rising to read a pro- 
test against the right of Turley and Walter to cast ballots in 
the senatorial contest. Mr. Hudspeth, the Democratic leader on 
the floor, attempted to choke him off" with the point of order 
that nothing was in order save the casting of the ballots for 
United States Senator ; but President Fish went to Mr. Griggs' 
aid with the ruling that a protest against the right of two usur- 
pers to participate in the discharge of the high function that 
then devolved upon the Legislature, was a question of the high- 
est privilege. 

" Such a motion," he concluded, in the midst of the most 
indescribable confusion, " is always in order, and the Senator 
from Passaic will proceed with the reading of the protest." 

Hudspeth attempted to appeal from the decision of the chair, 
but Fish declined to entertain the appeal. The great throng 
broke into tumult at once. The Republicans cheered ; hundreds 
of Abbett's partisans in the galleries hissed and groaned. Assem- 
blyman Phil. Tumulty, of Hudson, leaped to the top of his 
<iesk, and, shaking his clenched fist at Fish, denounced him in 
ribald language. Beckwith darted down the aisle, and with one 
foot on the step leading to the Speaker's dias, called Fish a cow- 
ardly cur, and threatened that unless he reversed his decision he 
would drag him from his place and throw him out of the Cham- 
ber. Edward T. McLaughlin, another Hudson Assemblyman, 

18 



274 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

hurled oaths at the President that were heard even above the 
prevailing din. Fish's face was- pale with excitement, but his 
jaw was set, and he let them threaten without replying, while 
Griggs went on with the reading of the protest. When he had 
finished it, he walked with a defiant air to the Clerk's desk, 
pushed his way through the throng gathered around it, and 
placed the paper in Secretary Reading's hands. 

Senator Edwards, of Hudson, immediately made a motion 
that the protest be expunged from the miniites, arguing that the 
House alone was the judge of the return and election of its 
members, and that the Senate had no right to question Turley's 
title to his seat after the House had passed upon it. Clerk 
Atkinson, who assisted Mr. Reading at the Secretary's desk, 
called the roll. Speaker Baird and the two Labor men voted 
with the Republicans, and succeeded in keeping the protest on 
the record. And, on the plea that the confusion that prevailed 
while Mr. Griggs was reading had made it impossible for the 
members to hear it, the majority proceeded to make it more un- 
comfortable for the Abbett men by directing that it be read 
again from the Secretary's desk, and, by an irony of fate, the 
function of reading it fell to the lot of House Clerk Atkinson, 
who was one of thie most devoted adherents of Abbett in the 
throng. Atkinson managed to swallow his indignation long 
enough to stumble through it, and when he had laid it aside he 
made himself the center of attraction by excitedly charging that 
Secretary Reading, his Republican superior at the desk, had 
tampered with the tally list. A re-call of the roll disproved 
the Clerk's suspicions, and the vote of forty- one to forty pinned 
the protest forever to the record of the proceedings. 

When the protest had been disposed of a formal vote for 
United States Senator was taken. On the ballot General Sewell 
had thirty-five Republican votes and Governor Abbett thirty- 
five Democratic votes. Besides these, Chattle and Throckmor- 
ton, Democrats, voted for ex- Governor Bedle ; Chase, Democrat, 
for ex-Governor George C. Ludlow; McBride and Kinney, 
Democrats, for Thomas Kays ; Carroll and Donohue, the Labor 
men, for Erastus E. Potter, a Port Oram schoolmaster who 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 275 

had made himself conspicuous as an orator on the Labor plat- 
form and the year before as the Labor candidate for Governor ; 
Baird, Democrat, for William H. Morrow, of Warren ; Corbin, 
Republican, for Cortlandt Parker; Hawkins, Republican, for 
William E. Potter, and Young, Republican, for Frederic A. 
Potts. 

The ballot showed substantially the same division of senti- 
ment on both sides as it was taken from day to day for the next 
two weeks, and slight tumults marked every convention of the 
two Houses. Because of his position, Baird was, of course, the 
chief object of attack by the Abbett men, and on the 23d day 
of February Allan L. McDermott, in the hope probably of 
bluffing him, sent to him by a messenger a brief note asking " a 
plain question — whether or not you will vote for a Republican 
for Senator." 

" I will answer your question ' when the swallows homeward 
fly,' " was the response which Baird traced in pencil on the back 
of Mr. McDermott's note. 

On the following day an attempt was made to put a resolu- 
tion through the Assembly denouncing Baird as a traitor to his 
party, and calling upon him to resign, but it was defeated, with 
the aid of Carroll and Donohue, by a vote of thirty to twenty- 
nine. Even Wolverton was aroused to denunciation of him 
for his course. From his seat in the House one day he regretted 
that he had helped to put the Warren pill-maker in the Speaker's 
chair, because he had noted that Baird had thrown all his in- 
fluence with the Republicans. 

"And between me and my God," shouted Wolverton, with 
uplifted hands, " no such contract was made when he was placed 
in the chair ; and I now say that I am ready by voice and vote 
to put another Speaker in the chair." 

All the efforts to depose Baird were unavailing, however, and 
the proceediugs in the Assembly Chamber continued to be 
marked by a succession of affrays. 

All this time the disaffected Democrats were endeavoring to 
patch up a bargain with the Republican caucus in favor of elect- 
ing another Democrat than Abbett. Several conspicuous anti- 



276 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Abbett names were canvassed. That of ex- Governor Bedle was 
the most prominent among them ; that of Thomas Kays stood 
next, and a portentous figure in the background was that of 
old Senator Hezekiah Smith, of Burlington, a big, burly six- 
footer, who had led a career that was equally disreputable and 
picturesque. He carried a rugged mind in a rugged body, and 
in the sixty years of activity that he had enjoyed up to the time 
that he came into the State Senate of New Jersey he had made 
himself an effective political factor in two States. 

Originally a blacksmith at Rutland, Vermont, he had suc- 
ceeded in acquiring a competence there and lived in handsome 
style with his wife and three children. His active participation 
in public affairs had led to his election to Congress as one of the 
representatives of the Green Mountain State. At the close of 
his term he suddenly disappeared from among his neighbors, 
and for years and years his family were unable to secure any 
tiding concerning him. Not till they learned that a certain 
Hezekiah B. Smith had been elected to represent one of the 
New Jersey districts in Congress had they any idea as to his 
whereabouts. The event showed that he had gone down to 
Burlington, New Jersey, from Vermont, and started in to make 
his fortune anew. He soon acquired money enough to enable 
him to build a large manufacturing establishment just outside 
of the city of Burlington, and it became the center, eventually, 
of a busy town, to which he gave the name of Smith ville. 
Soon recognized as a wealthy man, he wedded himself to an 
ambitious woman, fond of show, and made her the mistress of 
one of the handsomest estates in the Commonwealth. When 
his business was able to run itself without his personal attention, 
he plunged into politics, and in 1879 was elected to Congress 
from the Second district. His colleagues were George M. 
Robeson, Grant's noted Naval Secretary; Miles Ross, the poten- 
tial Middle State Democratic boss ; Alvah A. Clark, an oily- 
tongued Somerville lawyer; Charles H. Voorhis, of Bergen; 
John L. Blake, of Essex, and Lewis A. Brigham, who, with 
Isaac W. Scudder, enjoyed the distinction of being the only Re- 
publicans who ever represented Hudson county in Congress. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 277 

When old Hezekiah Smith's family in Vermont learned of the 
election of a man of that name to Congress from New Jersey, 
Mrs. Smith sent her eldest son to Burlington, to learn whether 
he was, indeed, her long-missing husband. The boy knew his 
father in the gruff old man whom he met, but Smith brazenly 
denied that he had ever seen the boy before, and the woman in 
the stately mansion at Smith ville turned him out of doors after 
the coarsest vilification of his mother. Smith absolutely re- 
fused to recognize his Vermont family, and, for the honor of 
her children, Mrs. Smith abstained from pursuing him. 

It was only after his death that the scandal of his life came 
to the surface, and his indignant sons, who had meanwhile 
achieved station themselves, scorned to touch a dollar of the 
million he left behind him. For some reason or other. Smith 
was not re-nominated for Congress, and in 1883 he turned up 
as the spokesman for Burlington on the floor of the State 
Senate. When Abbett came to the Governorship in 1884, the 
old man put in a claim to him for recognition as the channel for 
the distribution of official favors in his section of the State. 
Governor Abbett did not " cotton " to him, and there was even- 
tually an open rupture between them over the appointment of 
the Prosecutor of Pleas for Burlington county. Smith insisted 
upon the appointment of the man of his selection, and the 
Governor refused to yield. The old man was an obstructionist 
from that time on. He was eternally in the Governor's light ; 
and when Abbett tried to elect, as the new Senator from Bur- 
lington, a man favorable to himself, old Smith went into the 
polls against him and helped the Republicans to elect William 
H. Carter over him. The old man boasted with a swell of pride 
and satisfaction that he had spent $70,000 to defeat Abbett 
candidates for South Jersey seats in the Senate and Assembly, 
and that he would spend $100^000 more to keep him out of the 
United States Senate. 

He thought he saw his opportunity when the revolt broke 
out against Abbett in the Democratic caucus. Moved partly by 
revenge and partly by ambition, he announced himself as a 
candidate for United States Senator against Abbett, and was one 



278 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of the figures in the deal between the Republicans and the dis- 
affected Democrats. 

Throckmorton and the handful of allies who were wielded by 
the same influences that reached him, were more disposed to ex- 
Governor Bedle. The little, round, sunny-faced object of their 
adoration was, however, scarcely in consenting humor. Ex- 
Governor Bedle seemed to be perfectly willing to allow his name 
to be toyed with as long as it could serve any purpose as a foil 
to the movements of the Abbett managers, but he was not un- 
derstood to be at any time an active aspirant. On one of the 
ballots he had the votes of Chamberlain, Cranmer, Griggs, Luf- 
burrow, Oviatt, Republicans, and of Baird, Chattle and Throck- 
morton, Democrats. And towards the end it was understood 
that the mass of Republicans would go to his aid, and that the 
Senatorship was within his reach. The sentiment within the 
Republican caucus was not, however, enthusiastic for him in 
some quarters, and the Democratic bolters began to look around 
for a candidate who could more firmly unite them. 

Finally, it was suggested that it might not be unwise for the 
anti- Abbett men to revenge themselves upon him with a man 
upon whom he had himself trampled, and thus there came into 
the canvass furtive whispers of Rufus Blodgett's name. Mr. 
Blodgett was looked upon as not a particularly brilliant states- 
man, but as a level-headed and square-toed kind of a man, and, 
besides, he could reach railroad influences that were not accessible 
to a Pennsylvania Railroad candidate. He was a Jersey Central 
man ; had grown up from a brakeman to be Superintendent of 
the New York and Long Branch Railroad, and the prevailing 
belief that Abbett had, through McDermott, cheated him out of 
the gubernatorial nomination the year before, singled him out 
as bitterly unacceptable to the Abbett party. 

The Republicans had, as already stated, given the nomination 
to General Sewell, but the continued refusal of Messrs. Corbin, 
Hawkins and Young to act with their party led to the idea that 
some other Republican would have a better chance. Both Mr. 
Abbett and General Sewell were advised to withdraw from the 
scene. But the Senatorship had been the chief goal of Mr. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 279 

Abbett's ambition ; the hope of reaching it had alone reconciled 
him to his three years' service in the Governorship, and when- 
ever he was approached with a proposition of withdrawal he set 
his teeth firmly and said " no " with ferocious energy. General 
Sewell was almost as reluctant to drop his pursuit of the gaudy 
honor, but when he saw that Corbin, Hawkins and Young were 
impervious to all the influences with which he could surround 
them, he yielded to importunity and agreed to step aside. 

William Walter Phelps, the shining statesman of Bergen 
county, who had brought luster upon his name and the State as 
well, during his service in Congress as the representative of the 
Fifth district, was now summoned to the front as the coming 
man. Donohue and Carroll represented districts that were in 
the boundaries of Mr. Phelps' own Congressional district, and 
Mr. Phelps' friends had an idea that they could put sufficient 
local pressure upon them to induce them to join with the Repub- 
licans in electing him. The formal nomination was never taken 
away from General Sewell by the caucus, but it was generally 
understood among the Republican members that if Donohue 
and Carroll responded with Mr. Phelps' name in joint meeting, 
all of the Republican members were to turn in and make his 
election sure. 

Meanwhile, the Throckmorton bolters from the Democratic 
caucus were using their best endeavors to persuade the Republi- 
can caucus to join with them in the election of either Bedle or 
Blodgett. The Republicans were as anxious to beat Abbett as 
the others were, and their arguments did not fall on entirely 
deaf ears. The Republican caucus stood firmly, however, for a 
Republican candidate till, one day, after the deadlock had con- 
tinued for several weeks, the Throckmorton party served notice 
on them that they were being subjected to a terrific pressure for 
Abbett, and that unless the Republicans helped them to break 
the deadlock by four o'clock the next day they would be obliged 
to help their Democratic colleagues elect the Governor to the 
coveted position. The Republican caucus met this announce- 
ment by sending a committee to the Democratic independents 
asking them to submit three names of anti- Abbett Democrats 




William Walter Phelps. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 281 

for whom they would vote, and they responded with the names 
of R.ufu8 Blodgett, Thomas H. Kays, of Sussex, and old Heze- 
kiah Smith, of Burlington. 

When the Republicans went into joint meeting at noon of 
the day that saw the end of the contest, there was still hope that 
Mr. Phelps might be able to persuade the two Passaic Labor 
men, but it was so indefinite and unsettled that there was a 
general understanding among them that they might be required 
to break to one of the three named by the Democratic bolters. 
The Republicans were determined to persevere to the very end 
for a Republican candidate. They were equally determined not 
to allow Abbett to win even if they had to vote for a Demo- 
cratic candidate, and when the hour for joint meeting arrived, 
though it wag known that the issue had to be settled that after- 
noon, not a man of them knew which way or in whose favor it 
was to be settled. As it would be impossible for them to leave 
the joint meeting to decide upon a new candidate in the event of 
the failure of the negotiations of Phelps' friends with the Pater- 
son Labor men, it was arranged that the signal for the break 
from a Republican candidate, if there was to be any, should be 
given on the floor of joint meeting. 

The roll-call is arranged alphabetically, and the name of 
Peter Ackerman, of Bergen, was the first Republican name on 
Secretary Reading's list. All the Republicans were given to 
understand that on every ballot on which Ackerman voted for 
Sewell, they were to be free to vote as they pleased, but that if 
during the progress of the ballot he announced himself for 
Phelps or for a Democrat, they were all to follow the lead. 

Two or three ballots were taken while the Phelps men were 
making final efforts with the two Labor men. Word was finally 
brought to Colonel Samuel D. Dickinson, representing the Third 
district of Hudson, that the Paterson men were obdurate, that 
Phelps' election was impossible, and that if Abbett were to be 
beaten the Republicans must join with the Democratic bolters in 
voting^ for a Democrat. Dickinson hurried ex-Speaker Arm- 
strong to notify Ackerman that he must lead a break on the 
next roll-call. 



282 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

" Well, what is the name ? " asked Ackerman. 

" His name is Blodgett," was the answer. 

When the Clerk called Ackerman's name he answered with 
Blodgett's ; the Republicans all down the line responded with 
Blodgett. Carroll, explaining his vote, declared that the fight 
had dwindled down to a railroad and anti- railroad contest; that 
he was an anti-railroad man, and that he would vote for Leon 
Abbett. Donohue stuck to Potter because, he said, he was a 
Labor man, and he proposed to stick by his colors to the last. 
Colonel Dickinson adhered to Sewell and changed to Blodgett 
only when he saw that Sewell was defeated. Chase voted first 
for Abbett, but changed to Blodgett at the end. And Letts, a 
Democratic Assemblyman from Hoboken, in the hope of lead- 
ing a counter break to Sewell that would yet defeat Blodgett, 
changed to Sewell. The Democrats were on the edge of a stam- 
pede to the Camden chieftain, when Senator Edwards got up 
and checked it by saying that Governor Abbett preferred a poor 
Democrat to a good Republican. 

The Democratic malcontents all added their votes to those 
on the Blodgett list, and President Fish announced, amid a 
silence that betrayed the disappointment of the eager throng in 
the galleries, that Hufus Blodgett had forty-three votes and 
Leon Abbett only thirty-eight votes, and that Rufus Blodgett, 
and not Leon Abbett, had been elected United States Senator 
for the six- year term commencing on the 4th of March. 

Abbett's friends almost cried with rage when the end came. 
Assemblymen Heppenheimer, who had graduated from the law 
office into the Assembly, even hurled a volume of the Revised 
Statutes at Baird's head. Haggard and broken with disap- 
pointment, the Governor looked like one in the last stages of 
decline. 

Blodgett was stunned when a young Mercury rushed into the 
room in one of the Trenton hotels in which he awaited the 
news. He stared vacantly at the boy, as though doubting the 
evidence of his senses for a moment ; then, with a wild whoop 
of joy, he tossed the big sombrero he held in his hands, to the 
ceiling. It was a great stroke of fortune that advanced the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 283 

uncouth and unlettered railroad man to a place among the rulers 
of the earth. The Republicans lived to repent their part in the 
affair. It left the resourceful Abbett in the field to battle them, 
while there was no compensating gain for them in Blodgett's 
uneventful service in the great building on Capitol Hill. 



I 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

Which shows how the Republicans Frightened the Liquor- 
Dealers WITH A Temperance Bill and were in Turn 
Punished by the Liquor Men for the Scare, 




PHE Republicans of the State were meanwhile looking 
forward to the possible outcome of two important po- 
litical battles to be fought to an issue in 1889. Sena- 
tor McPherson^s term at Washington was to expire in 
March, and the Republicans were ambitious to control the Leg- 
islature of 1889, and so name his successor. In the fall of 1889^ 
the two parties were to contend for the Governorship, Governor 
Green's term expiring in January, 1890. General Sewell prob- 
ably had his eye on Senator McPherson's seat in the Senate, and 
Senator Griggs, of Passaic, flattered himself that his notable 
work in connection with the passage of the Railroad Tax act 
would make him an available candidate for the Governorship. 
They had both observed that in the last gubernatorial cam- 
paign (1886) the Temperance men held the balance of power 
between the two parties — that the combined Prohibition and 
Republican vote exceeded the Democratic vote given Green. 
Green had beaten Howey, the Republican candidate, by 8,000 
votes ; General Fisk, who had made an especially active can- 
vass as the Prohibition candidate for Governor, had polled be- 
tween 19,000 and 20,000 votes. It was a problem in simple 
addition to figure that if the 19,000 Fisk votes had been cast 
for Howey, the State would have had a Republican instead of a 
Democratic Governor. It had been noted, too, that just as the 
Prohibition vote went up the Republican vote went down, and 
that the Republican loss to the Prohibition party was largely 
from the Republican counties where General Se well's influence 
was supreme. The General was naturally desirous of main- 
(284) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 285 

laining his ascendancy in the counties that would most readily 
give him their votes for Senator, and Mr. Griggs' gubernatorial 
aspirations made him keenly anxious to bring the straying 
sheep from all over back to the Republican fold. 

More, eveUj than what had been done was the danger of what 
might be done. The tendency of the Prohibition vote had been 
steadily upward. The cold water men had made their first State 
campaign in the gubernatorial contest of 1877. It was a new 
thing then, and all the temperance zealots in the State flocked 
to its standard to see how much of a power they could make of 
themselves. They managed to poll 1,438 votes. This was not 
particularly promising for a new party, and when the venerable 
Stephen B. Ransom, of Hudson county, led their ticket three 
years later, they did not rally to his support and the temperance 
vote declined to 125. But in 1883 Parsons polled 4,153 votes 
on a tee-total platform, and in 1886 Fisk's vote jumped, as al- 
ready stated, to within a hundred or two of 20,000. The Re- 
publican leaders wondered what rate of increase might mark 
their vote for 1889 unless some concessions were made. 

When the Republicans found themselves in control of 
the Legislature of 1888, they decided to temporize with this 
cold water brigade. In the House were thirty- seven Re- 
publicans and twenty- three Democrats, and Colonel Samuel D. 
Dickinson, of Hudson county, was made the Speaker. The 
Senate consisted of twelve Republicans and nine Democrats, 
with Senator George H. Large, of Hunterdon, as their presiding 
officer. The first Republican caucus held after the organization 
was summoned to deal with the liquor question. There were 
several conferences, and they eventuated in a bill that subse- 
quently became known as the Local Option-High License act. 
The act made it the duty of the Circuit Court Judge presiding 
in any county, on the application of a certain percentage of the 
voters, to submit to the people of the county at a special elec- 
tion the question whether drinking-places should be licensed 
within the county. If the majority of the votes were in the 
negative, saloons were barred throughout the county. If the 
vote were in favor, saloons could be licensed under other clauses 



286 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of the bill. The licensing parts of the bill graded the cost of a 
license in cities according to their sizes, from $500 to $100. 
The act also put saloons where liquor was sold on Sundays into 
the category of disorderly houses and visited the severest penal- 
ties upon those who either sold without a license or violated the 
Sunday law. 

When its full import became known the act created the wildest 
excitement in the bar rooms all over the State, and the liquor 
dealers jQocked to Trenton to use their influence for its defeat. 
It was especially obnoxious in Jersey City, where between 
1,000 and 1,200 saloons were operating under licenses that had 
cost only $50 apiece ; in Newark, where over 1,000 saloons 
were permitted to do business on the payment of a like sum into 
the city treasury ; in Hoboken, where there were 300 saloons 
paying $25 annual license, and in other cities of the State where 
licenses were almost as cheap. The saloon men agreed with one 
voice that the increase of the license fee would force them out of 
business, and they urged that a lower figure be fixed. Subse- 
quent conferences ended in the decrease of the fee from $500 to 
$250 for the largest cities, but in no other modifications of the 
bill. When the caucus had perfected it the bill was rushed 
through two readings in the House on one day. McDermit, of 
Newark, made an attempt to delay its passage, but Assembly- 
man Rogers, of Passaic, sprang the previous question and it 
went through by a decisive vote. 

The aye votes were cast by Brown, Conkling, Dickinson, 
Emley, Fuller, Gallagher, Goble, Hansell, Harrington, Hill, 
G. H. Higgins, Hutchinson, Jones, Low, Learning, Ludlam, 
Luf burrow, Lyon, Marlatt, McGowan, Meeker, Nixon, Olden, 
Peck, Riker, Rogers, Smalley, Smith, Ulrich, Voorhees, West. 

The nay vote was cast by Bale, Bloomer, Christie, Cutter, 
Dusenberry, Farrell, Feeney, Heppenheimer, A. A. Higgins, 
Hoover, Kays, Leavitt, Letts, Lozier, Martin, Matthews, 
McDermit, Mulvey, Mutchler, Norton, Pitney, Potts, Riley, 
Schmelz, Short, Trimmer. Of those who voted for it, Ludlam 
and Smalley were Democrats; Dusenberry, Christie, Lozier, 
Leavitt and Letts, who voted against it, were Republicans. 



I 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 287 

The bill was rushed into the Senate and pressed to final 
passage in two days. On roll-call, Senators Edwards, of Hud- 
son, and WyckoflP, of Warren, protested against what they called 
its railroading. No time was lost, however, and the roll-call 
showed twelve votes for it and only six against it. 

The aye vote was cast by Carter, Cranmer, Gardner, Griggs, 
Hanes, Large, Martin, Miller, Nevius, Roe, Rue and Thomp- 
son. The negatives were Edwards, McBride, Newell, PfeiiFer, 
Werts and Wyckoff. Senators Baker, Bogart and Chase were 
absent. Baker afterwards appeared and asked to be recorded in 
its favor, and Bogart against it. Governor Green promptly 
vetoed it, and the liquor men are said to have offered fabulous 
sums for votes in favor of the veto. When the veto was called 
up in the House, it provoked a long debate, in which McDermit 
of Essex and Feeney and Heppenheimer of Hudson argued 
in its support, and Assemblymen Charles W. Fuller of Hudson, 
Emley of Passaic, and Goble of Ocean spoke for the bill. 
Lozier, one of the Republicans who refused to abide the caucus 
action, declared that his objection was to the local option feature ; 
and Goble, in his remarks, said that he was tired of seeing the 
State run by the rum power. As everybody expected it would, 
the House overrode the veto, and the act was sent to the Senate 
for passage notwithstanding the Governor's objections. There, 
after a two-days' debate, with Nevius, Griggs and Gardner 
championing the bill, and Werts, McBride and Edwards defend- 
ing its veto, the veto was overridden ; and the act, passed by the 
party vote, became a law of the State. 

The passage of the act called the warring clans into imme- 
diate action. The temperance men were first in the field. They 
organized almost immediately to prepare for the attack upon 
what they described as the entrenched rum power. Dr. Henry K. 
Carroll, Chairman of the Central Local Option Committee, pre- 
sided at their meeting in the State Health Board's office, and a 
Permanent Central Executive Committee, consisting of Dr. 
Carroll himself; John Y. Foster, of the Newark Law and 
Order League ; Rev. A. E, Ballard, of Ocean Grove, President 
of the Church Committee on Temperance ; Rev. B. S. Everitt,. 



-288 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

President of the State Temperance Alliance; Major James S. 
Yard, a well-known Democratic editor in Freehold ; George J. 
Ferry, a conspicuous Orange Methodist ; Judge J. S. Diverty, 
of Cape May ; Rev. B. C. Lippincott and D. F. Merritt, was 
instructed to organize the counties with all possible dispatch for 
local option elections. Within a week they had warmed the 
local temperance organizations into energetic action, and in half 
the counties of the State movements looking to the holding of 
special elections were set on foot. 

The care of the liquor interests was in the hands of the State 
Liquor Dealers' Association. Finance Commissioner John 
Edelstein, of Jersey City, was their Chairman, and ex- Governor 
Leon Abbett was their counsel. This organization represented, 
as the inimitable Harrigan, of Essex, had said from his seat in 
the Assembly Chamber during the discussion of the bill, an 
army of saloon men with a capital of $15,000,000 invested in 
the traffic. They were numerous enough and had retainers 
enough to be moulders of sentiment themselves — so much so 
that they threatened that unless the Democrats gave them 
assurances of the repeal of the law, they would organize a 
party of their own and make a campaign on the distinctive 
rum issue. They might have gone to this extreme, but that 
Governor Abbett had set his eye upon the chief chair of state 
again, and that his official and personal relations with them gave 
him an opportunity to put the brakes on their mad impetuosity. 

There was not a phase of the bill that satisfied them. The 
idea of having the saloon barred entirely out of any county in the 
State could never be accepted by them, of course. The increased 
license fee threatened to force many unable to raise the money 
out of business. The clause pillorying the Sunday saloon as a 
" disorderly house " gored their sensibilities. Violations of the 
Sunday law were the rule everywhere in the populous cities. 
There had been no way of punishing them except through pre- 
sentments by the grand juries, and the grand juries they con- 
trolled, so that they were protected in their offending. Even when 
^hey had been handed up to the courts, the penalties had been so 
iight as to give them no concern. They could pay the trifling 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 289 



fine on Monday out of the business of the Sunday before and 
have a handsome margin of profit left. But the new act meant 
suspension of business for a year on first conviction, and for- 
feiture of their licenses, with the added penalty of being forever 
forbidden to resume, on the second. 

But when they entered upon their contest for the repeal of the 
law, they found themselves handicapped by a very general popu- 
lar satisfaction with most of its features. The increased license 
fee was a boon to the local treasuries that quite reconciled tax- 
payers to other phases of it which might not otherwise have 
commanded their ready admiiation. Jersey City, which had 
been forced to license her thousand saloons for $50,000, was now 
able to exact $250,000 annual tribute from them. Hoboken's 
license receipts leaped from less than $10,000 to nearly $30,000. 
Newark's local treasury was enriched to the extent of $200,00a 
or more a year, and, speaking generally, people of the munici- 
palities were gratified to see that the rum sellers were obliged at 
last to contribute something like their share towards the main- 
tenance of the jails and workhouses and poorhouses which they 
filled with their victims. It soon became apparent even to the 
saloon-keepers themselves that whatever else they might be able 
to do in the direction of softening the rigors of the law, the 
high license end of it would be a hard thing to root out. 

They were treated to a surprise in the popularity of the local 
option end as well, as the temperance people forced the issue to 
the front by applications for special elections under it. Cum- 
berland was the first to ask the privilege of forbidding the open- 
ing of a saloon on her soil. The application was made to the 
court, and a day in August was designated for the taking of her 
vote. Her earnest people never worked so hard for a triumph 
in the interests of law and order. The temperance workers in 
one little town had sixteen wagons on the go all day. Women 
held prayer-meetings at the polling places in other towns. The 
hquor men received the announcement that she had declared 
against license with an unconcern that was not affected. With 
Vineland and Bridgeton, founded on the Prohibition idea, among 
her towns, they had expected nothing else of her. But they 

19 



290 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

took alarm when, a month later, they eaw Democratic Warren 
also order all of her road- houses and taverns closed by a majority 
of 900 on the popular vote, and Salem the same day set her face 
against the saloons by a majority that, compared with her popu- 
lation, was even more pronounced. Then Gloucester, filled with 
factory hands all more or less enamored of a " drap o' the cray- 
thur," wheeled into the Prohibition column by over 700 majority, 
and Cape May spoke up to say that the mammoth hostelries of 
her great watering resorts should confine themselves to the sale 
of soda water and ginger pop and church-fair lemonade. 

They were stunned out of their senses when, about the time 
the Legislature of 1889 was assembling, Democratic Hunterdon, 
wedded to her apple-jack, had gone for reform and no license. 
The State eeemed to be wild in its prohibition enthusiasm. 
Every day brought new applications to the courts for elections 
in other counties. The temperance people of Jersey City and 
Newark hoped to banish the bar even from Hudson and Essex; 
and the brewers and liquor men feared that the temperance wave, 
a ripple when it caught Cumberland in its embrace that had 
grown into a roaring billow when it swept over Hunterdon, 
might deluge the bars of the more populous industrial localities 
with cold water. . 

The danger was too great for the liquor men to try the ex- 
periment of an independent liquor campaign. Their only hope 
was in an alliance with the Democratic candidates, and by the 
time the parties were ready to open up for the fall campaign of 
1888 they had secretly agreed to labor for the success of the 
Democratic Assembly and Senatorial tickets. The Democrats 
gave them recognition in their conventions. Brewers Weiden- 
mayer and Schmelz were among the candidates the party offered 
to the Newark voters, and the lists were full of names of men 
more or less directly interested in the liquor traflBc. That the 
party had sold itself out to the rum power was the charge with 
which the Republicans made the Democracy face the people. 
The Democrats, in their turn, described the Republican policy 
as puritanical and full of blue-law narrowness. Every inch of 
ground was contested by both sides with desperate energy. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 291 



Both parties recognized the combat as one that would determine 
their fortunes for years to come. The liquor element worked 
harder for Democratic success even than the Democratic party 
did itself; and when the results were cast up in the small hours 
following election day, it was seen that the Democrats had 
wrested the control of both Houses from the Republicans. 

" Now," boasted one of the members of the Liquor Dealers' 
Association, when the result of the election became known, 
^' there will be no United States Senator elected till the Anti- 
Liquor law is repealed." 

The threat was in contemplation of the choice for United 
States Senator, successor to John R. McPherson, to be made 
during the coming session of the Legislature. Mr. McPherson's 
term was to expire in March, 1889. When the joint caucus of 
the Democratic members of the two Houses assembled in Janu- 
ary to select the new Senator the threatened attempt to force the 
legislators to pledge themselves to the repeal of the law as a 
condition precedent to the nomination of a candidate for Senator 
was actually made, but it fell short of the mark. 

The counties were still holding, or preparing to hold, new 
local option elections when the Legislature of 1889 gathered in 
the State House ; and among the very first bills offered for its 
<5onsideration was one by Brewer-Assemblyman George W. 
Weidenmayer aimed at the Local Option law. The subject was 
a delicate one for the politicians to handle, especially in view of 
the gubernatorial election to be held in the fall. The liquor 
men deemed the Weidenmayer act a trifle too conservative to 
meet their views, and insisted upon the uprooting of the legisla- 
tion of 1888, and the members evinced a disposition to yield to 
their demands. But the party leaders feared the political effect 
of going so far. The two parties watched each other as cats 
watch mice. The Republicans kept their eye upon the Weiden- 
mayer act as the one representing the composite views of the 
Democratic leaders and consequently destined to pass, and they 
were ever on the elert for an opportunity to choke it to death. 
The absence of a Democratic member from the Assembly 
Chamber gave the Republicans an accidental majority upon one 



292 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

occasion, and young Assemblyman Voorhees, of Union, gave 
the Democrats a big scare by calling the bill up for action. 
Speaker Hudspeth saw that his purpose was to defeat it, and he 
sent the sergeants and doorkeepers and pages scurryiHg in all 
directions for the absentees while, with repeated roll-calls, he 
held the minority at bay. Informed at last that they were not 
within reach, he entertained a motion to adjourn, and declared 
it carried without taking the trouble to ask for the " nay '* 
votes. His frightened party associates disappeared from their 
seats and dropped to the ground out of the windows as though 
the room were afire inside. 

The Republicans discovered, a few days later, that the 
Weidenmayer act was not to be the favored one after all. The 
repealing act was still in embryo. Senator McPherson, ex-Gov- 
ernor Abbett, Allan McDermott, and the brewers were holding 
anxious nightly conferences for the perfecting of a bill Senator 
Werts, of Morris, had outlined. When it had been finally 
licked into shape, the liquor men were all but pleased with it.. 
It merely repealed local option ; it did not interfere with high 
license, though it incidentally modified the clauses regarding the 
sale of liquor on the Sabbath. There was doubt whether the 
Senate could be brought to the making of even this concession. 

A single vote represented the Democratic majority in that 
branch of the Legislature. A political accident had given the 
people of Cumberland a Democrat to represent them, and this 
Senator, Baker, was unwilling to aid in the repeal of an act 
which his constituents had so enthusiastically accepted but a few 
months before. Warren, too, had declared against saloons, and 
Senator Wyckoff, her representative, hesitated, in view of her 
declaration against the saloon, to interfere with the local option 
end of the law. WyckofiP was easily persuaded to step out of 
the way. But the Cumberland Senator was more obstinate, and 
fears were entertained that his opposition would defeat the pas- 
sage of the repealer. 

The Democratic caucus had a whole raft of party bills on 
their way through the Houses at the time this obstruction was 
encountered, and the liquor men declared that not one of them. 



I 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 293 

should be advanced a single step till relief had been given them, 
and the Democratic managers sat up nights with Baker in the 
hope of bringing him to terms. Such a thing as an out-and-out 
repealer of the Local Option act he would not listen to, and they 
worried their brains over the problem till they had worked out 
a scheme of town option that might please him. It provided 
that on the petition of one-fifth of the local voters of any town- 
ship, borough or city where licenses were granted by the Courts 
of Common Pleas, the court could fix a day whereon the mini- 
mum license fee could be determined by popular vote. In most 
of the municipalities the licenses were granted by local excise 
boards, and the local option provided in this amendment could 
be of but limited application ; but Senator Baker accepted it 
with many misgivings, and the bill in that shape was started on 
its way through the Houses. 

The church and temperance people were not inactive while 
these steps were being taken. The desks of the Clerks in both 
Houses were deluged with memorials against any interference 
with the temp'}rance law ; and when the Senate was thrown open 
to the protestants, the speeches made by Rev. Dr. Ballard, Rev. 
Cornelius Brett of Jersey City, Major Yard of Freehold, Wal- 
lace McGeorge of Gloucester, Oscar Jeffery of Warren and 
Rev. J. H. Knowles of Newark in behalf of the retention of 
the law were heard and applauded by an enormous throng of 
people. Their efforts were all in vain, however. The repealing 
act was whipped through both the Houses as s :>on as the path 
had been cleared for it, and Governor Green signed it with as 
little delay. 

The effect of its passage was to negative the local option votes 
in the counties that had voted in favor of it, and to stop the 
threatened local option invasion of other counties. The liquor 
men had escaped the menace of the entire destruction of their 
traffic in the State ; but they were yet far from satisfied. They 
still persisted in their efforts to destroy the high license features 
of the act, and filled the seats in the Assembly with men of 
their own calling in that interest. But the leaders of the Demo- 
cratic party refused to permit any further modification of the 
anain features of the enactment. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

The Little Romance Here Unfolded in Connection with Senator 

McPherson's Last Election to the United States Senate 

is Not Necessarily a Political One ; But it la a 

Trifle Too Pretty to be Left Untold. 




HE returns of the election of 1888 showed a Demo- 
cratic majority in the Legislature of 1889. The Demo- 
crats in the Senate were only one ahead of the Repub- 
licans, and in the Assembly they had but a single vote 
to spare beyond a working majority. The death of Assembly- 
man Short, of Hudson, on the eve of the opening of the session, 
left them with barely enough votes in the House to control the 
organization. Senator McPherson's second term was to expire 
in March, and the filling of the vacancy was to be one of the 
features of the winter's work. A close Legislature is a ticklish 
thing for a party fo handle in a senatorial year. The disturb- 
ances of party plans that a little handful of malcontents can 
create when the party majority on joint ballot is a small one had 
been demonstrated by the experiences of the legislative struggles 
of 1883 and 1887. Senator McPherson, who was seeking a second 
re-election, was unwilling that a single possible Democratic vote 
should be lost, and he urged a special election for a member to 
take the seat of the dead Assemblyman. The more insistent 
was he because the district from which Short had been returned 
was strongly Democratic, and a Democratic nomination there 
was as good as an election. 

The unquestioning fidelity of the voters of the district to the 
Democratic label made the local managers reckless about the 
worth and fitness of the man whom they set up as their nominee. 
Their candidate was a stolid-looking fellow, undersized, thick- 
set, swarthy of face, with short-cropped mustache that did not 
(291) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 295 

conceal his full red lips, and who plastered his hair down upon 
his forehead. He had the general aspect of a rather good- 
looking peanut vender. But he was not a peanut vender. 
Most of the time he was one of Sheriff Davis's tipstaves in 
waiting upon the Hudson county courts. The rest of it he 
spent in hi3 barber shop in the West Hoboken region. 

He might have led to the end the unconspicuom life his call- 
ings had marked out for him and never have been known to 
fame if a florist neighbor of his had not been the luckless father 
of a wayward daughter. Her girlish vivacity captivated the 
barber- constable, and though he had at home a prettier wife 
who should have claimed his affections, he devoted himself to 
this newer sweetheart of his till all the town was talking about 
him. Of a sudden she disappeared. Her heartbroken old 
father guessed at once the influence that had led her away, but 
his prayerful entreaties for her restoration were met by his 
barber neighbor with heartless denials and indifference. And 
then the white-haired old man tottered out on his cane to search 
for her. Night and day he went in quest of clues and followed 
them up to nothing till his feeble limbs refused to bear him 
further. And way into the hours of the night would he sit in 
his humble home croning the story of his fruitless travels over 
to the bloodhound, as lonesome and down-hearted as himself, 
that lay curled at his feet. 

Then the stricken man's sympathies would overflow till 
they embraced even the dog, and he would murmur Bella's 
name in abstraction, and ask the brute if he remembered her, 
if he missed her, without expecting any answer, not noticing, 
indeed, in the absorption of his own sorrow that he had even 
asked the question. 

But the answer never failed him. At each mention of the 
name the dog would spring to his feet, and quivering in every 
muscle with eager expectancy, would gaze at the door as though 
ready to greet his bright-eyed and fair-haired little mistress as 
she came tripping over the threshold, to throw herself by his 
side and circle his neck with her arms again as of yore. 

" No, no, boy," the old man would murmur admonishingly. 



i 



296 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

*' Not there, boy. Gone ! Dead ! Worse'n dead, boy — 
worse'n dead ! On Fourteenth street they say she can be found. 
But Fourteenth's a long street, and there's many a house on it, 
and one might as well not know the street as not know the 
number." 

There was such helpless despair in his words, that the dog, 
moved by the tone, would droop his ears and grow gloomy again 
and curl himself on the floor and blink and mope the night 
away, while the old man would live over again in fitful slumbers 
the events and labors of the day. 

" Lie down. Sport ! Lie down, sir ! " 

The old man said it in his dream. But the dog was not to 
be quieted. He was tugging at the bagged trouser knees of 
the drowsy florist. The old man, annoyed, opened his eyes to 
enforce his command. The dog stood before him gazing into 
his face with beaming eye, his ears alert, his tail whisking. And 
when he'd barked his drowsy master awake, he dashed off to a 
corner of the room, caught an ill-shapen cast-off shoe of the miss- 
ing girl between his teeth, hid it under the cupboard, and 
scented around it till he brought it forth again and laid it in his 
master's lap. 

The brute wa3 talking in pantomime. The old florist watched 
his movements with curious eye, but understood it all when 
the worn slipper was placed gently on his knee. 

" You're a Sleuth, Sport. Will you help find Bella for me ? " 
he asked with cheerful voice born of new hope. "You say 
* yes ' in your bark. Sport. To-morrow I try you." 

Sleep was banished from the florist's eyes for the night. He 
beguiled the hours till daylight by recalling all the wonderful 
stories about the scent of hounds he had heard from his boyhood 
up. At gray dawn he was making his preparations for his visit 
and Sport's, to the thoroughfare in New York about which he 
had been murmuring in his dreams for days past. 

The dog's snout had been rubbed with the worn slipper to 
point his scent when his master landed with him at the foot of 
the street through which he proposed to make his quest. The 
knowing brute seemed to have a keen sense of his mission. He 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 297 

trotted along with an uninterested air, the old man following 
whither the string fastened to the animal's collar led him, for 
blocks and blocks. Of a sudden the dog began to sniff and 
«cent around, sticking his nose into angles around the stoops, at 
the curbs, in the gutters. The old man's heart throbbed with 
anticipation. His kean-noaed guide had struck the trail his 
anxious heart had sought in vain. Closer and closer to the 
pavement the dog bent ; more nervous and eager and erratic 
became his movements as he darted here and darted there — 
to railing, to gutter, to crosswalk — as though he feared the scent 
would escape him, sniffing, panting, throbbing, with low satis- 
fied growls between, quivering in every muscle, his pace grow- 
ing quicker and quicker as the trail grew warmer, till in his 
frenzy he had forgotten all about his old master and the string 
that tied him to him, and he was dragging the feeble man 
down the street on a trot to which his cracking limbs had not 
been accustomed in many a day. 

And now he stops to smell around the steps of a stoop, and 
around the iron post at its foot, till with a bound he springs to 
the cap stone and plants his two paws firmly against the closed 
doors. The old man knows his search has ended — and there in 
that house is his wayward girl. 

Of course he took her home with him, but the barber's spell 
over her had not been broken, and it was not many weeks before 
she tore her stricken father's heart again by a second disappear- 
ance. The disheartened florist started on a new voyage of dis- 
covery, but not a ray of hope brightened the prospect. He 
couldn't even learn that she had gone to New York, and in utter 
despair he dropped his hands by his side and decided to await 
the turn of events. 

Lying in a woods not far from Bella's home, the body of a 
beautiful girl was found some weeks later. Her skull had been 
crushed in with a stone. Her bonnet had been torn from her 
head. The brush around showed the evidence of a fierce 
struggle. The country was startled by the brutality of the 
crime and interested in her fate because of her beauty. The 
mangled form was carried to Crane's morgue, in Hoboken, and 



I 



298 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

placed on a slab in the dark and damp basement that served a& 
the dead-room. A feeble gas-jet that flickered above her form 
lent weirdnees to the scene. Attendants folded her small hands 
over her breast, and thousands of people — some anxious and 
apprehensive, some merely curious — streamed down the stone 
steps into the dimly-lighted crypt to see if they could tell who 
she was and whence she had come. None knew her. No one 
had ever seen her before. 

A gray- headed man, bent with age and leaning on a stick, 
was among the last to totter down the steps. He halted by the side 
of the bier, with its pallid, upturned face and interlocked fingers. 
He drew the rubber cloth that covered her face tenderly back»^ 
and examined teeth and ears and hair. Then, with trembling 
fingers, he turned the cover another curl, unfastened the waist,, 
and peered at the underwear. A red sack that covered the bust 
unnerved him. 

He sank back against the wall. 

" It's Bella ! " he moaned. " Poor Bella ! He's murdered 
you at last, my girl." 

The whole of North Hudson was ablaze with excitement the 
moment the identification became known. Vigilance commit- 
tees started out to search for the suspected barber. He was not 
at home, and his wife was told to warn him to produce the 
missing florist's daughter or take the consequences. The crim- 
inal authorities of the county heard the story and lost no time 
in acting. Prosecutor McGill was ready to spring a charge of 
murder upon the girl's abductor. Ex-Judge William T. Hoff- 
man appeared as sponser for the suspected fellow. 

" I have assurances," he declared, " that Bella is alive." 

" Let her be produced, then, before five o'clock this evening," 
the Prosecutor responded, " or we'll arrest your client for her 
murder." 

The con stable- barber consented to pilot the searching party. 
The one condition he exacted was that the girl's father should 
not accompany them. He was afraid of the old man's vengeance,^ 
No one save the constable knew Bella by sight. Coroner John 
R. Wiggins, who was one of the detail, armed himself, for a 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 299^ 

guard against deceptioD, with the worn shoe with which the old 
man had once pointed the bloodhound's scent, and accompanied 
the searchers across the river. The house to which he escorted 
them was brilliant with light from top to bottom. Sounds of 
revelry greeted their ears as the door swung open at their sum- 
mons. The music of a piano mingled with the clink of glasses,, 
with peals of laughter, with hilarious snatches of song. Women 
and men were holding high carnival in the handsomely-appointed 
parlors. The constable stepped to the middle of the room. 

" Bella ! " 

A bright- faced girl with crinkled blonde hair falling in wavy 
sunshine over her shoulders, recognized the voice, and, dashing 
from the throng, tripped gaily to him. 

"Are you Bella ? " Wiggins asked. 

" Why, of course I am," she responded naively, with a tinge 
of wonderment in her voice. 

"If you are, this shoe will fit you," the Coroner pursued. 
" Would you mind trying it on ? " 

It was the old story of Cinderella again, except that the 
slipper was not of glass, but was rather a decrepit specimen of 
a house shoe, bulging at the side and run over at the heel. The 
Coroner knelt to unfasten the buttons that held the high-heeled 
fashionable gaiter to her shapely foot and try the other in its 
place. 

" It fits like a glove," he said when he had adjusted it. 
"There is no doubt, gentlemen, that Bella's body is not in the 
morgue at Hoboken." 

Of course the old man had known it was not Bella's corpse 
when he viewed it. His identification was but his ruse to force 
the abductor of his child to make revelation as to her where- 
abouts. It was many weeks before the authorities learned who 
the unknown victim of violence was. Her identity might 
never have been uncovered but for the skill and energy of a 
young newspaper reporter, Augustus A. Seide, who traced the 
woman by a bit of newspaper that lay upon the ground by her 
side, and who, in the end, brought her brutal murderer to the- 
gallows. 



300 MODERN BATTLEIS OF TRENTON. 

In spite of the fact that this story was laid bare amoDg the 
voters, the stolid community which the Lothario constable barber 
^iesired to represent sent him to the Assembly to make its Demo- 
cratic majority there more safe. 

At the opening of the session, both Houses were in control of 
the Democrats. Senator Werts, of Morris, was chosen to the 
Presidency of the Senate without opposition. After a canvass 
in which Assemblymen Frank M. McDermit, of Essex, and 
Hudspeth, Feeaey and Heppenheimer, of Hudson, were the 
candidates, Hudspeth mounted to the Speakership of the 
Assembly. When the Democratic joint caucus was about ready 
to assemble, the re-election of Senator McPherson seemed to be 
one of the foregone conclusions. Mr. McPherson had made 
the canvass for the Senatorship by leading the campaign, and it 
wa? his generalship that had brought two Democratic Houses to 
Trenton to fill the vacancy. The Republican gerrymander of 
the Assembly districts was an obstacle that was not easy to over- 
come and he had not been over-willing to undertake the labors 
of the fight. But the Democratic leaders had urged him into 
the campaign, reminding him of the honors the party had paid 
him by twice electing him, and insisting that he owed to it at 
least the inspiration and boom that his known ambition for 
re-election would impart to it. That, after being thus prodded, 
he had made a successful fight, was shown by the Democratic 
majority that was now gathered in Trenton to name the Senator 
for the new term ; and there was general agreement that his 
re-election was the fitting reward of his labors. 

As the time for the holding of the caucus approached, how- 
ever, whispers crept abroad that his nomination might not go to 
him so unanimously as people had expected. There was an 
ominous quiet among the friends of Governor Abbett. They 
were not active enough in Senator McPherson's behalf to indi- 
cate a loyal adherence to his cause. Senator McPherson was 
not disquieted by their apathy till it was supplemented by 
intimations that Governor Abbett himself was preparing to 
enter the lists against him. 

The situation was so uncertain that the Republicans hoped to 
profit by it in spite of the adverse majority that confronted 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 301 



them, and in the Republican joint caucus Senator Nevius, the 
one-armed veteran who represented Monmouth, advised that no 
candidate be selected for the present. Senator Gardner, of 
Atlantic, protested against delay, and notwithstanding Senator 
Nevius, the caucus proceeded to the selection of a candidate. 
Captain Smith, one of the Camden Assemblymen, presented 
General Se well's name ; Senator A. F. R. Martin, of Essex^ 
submitted the name of ex- Congressman Geo. A. Haleey. Gen- 
eral Sewell had a majority of the votes, and was declared the 
nominee. 

Meanwhile, the whisper of Governor Abbett's candidacy had 
grown to be more than a whisper. He had stepped boldly into 
the open and announced himself. The course of legislation for 
the last two or three years had summoned a new factor in State 
politics to his back. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Com- 
pany, which had been using the New Jersey Central Railroad 
Company's line and terminal facilities to reach New York, had 
broken its contract with that company. It had laid its plans to 
cross the State to a point near Perth Amboy, and then bridge 
the Kills to Staten Island, run thence to the south shore, and 
convey its passengers across the bay from Staten Island on ferry- 
boats. 

Under the General Railroad law the company had the right 
to construct its line across the State, but when it reached the 
water-front at the Kills it was confronted by the absence of leg- 
islative authority to bridge. Its plans contemplated the resting 
of its westerly abutment on the Jersey shore. This being im- 
possible without invading the riparian prerogatives of the State^ 
it had sought relief at the hands of the Legislature. The Penn- 
sylvania Railroad lobby offered bitter opposition. The struggle 
was a renewal in another form of the old railroad rivalry that 
had ended in the passage of the General Railroad law in 1872. 
Governor Abbett had not been unfavorable to the granting of 
the franchise it sought, and it was this great corporation that 
came to his back now and made him a formidable candidate for 
the Senatorsbip against Mr. McPherson, whose friendship for 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company was everywhere known. 



302 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

A " still hunt " had been made in Governor Abbett's favor, and 
Senator McPherson's friends were on the edge of allowing the 
<;aucus to meet when, to their surprise, they discovered that 
Abbett had a majority of the votes in it. 

There had been a short session of the House one Monday 
night, and the announcement was made from the Speaker's chair 
that the caucus would take possession of the Assembly Chamber 
immediately after adjournment. Mr. McPherson's friends had 
not the faintest conception of Mr. Abbett's strength, and as soon 
as the Republican members had left their seats the Democratic 
Senators were admitted to the Chamber and the doors were 
locked. The caucus was about to be called to order when a 
precautionary count of noses showed that Abbett was far in the 
lead. The stunned McPherson men were thrown into confusion. 
But they had an advantage in having the Chairman of the caucus 
with them, and he abstained from calling the caucus to order 
while McPherson'g agents hastened to the Chamber to button- 
hole and argue with members. The State House has seldom 
witnessed such a lively hustle as the floor of the Assembly 
Chamber presented for the next half hour. Within that half 
hour the whole aspect of the situation had changed. Mr. Ab- 
bett had lost some of his votes, his majority had been destroyed, 
and, on the roll-call, Mr. McPherson had 25 of the 43 votes. 

Those who voted for McPherson were Adrain, Baker, Bige- 
low, Bogart, Cutter, Davis, Donnelly, Edwards, Fagan, Far- 
rell, Francois, Hudspeth, Kalisch, Kane, Klotz, Mallon, Naugh- 
right, Newell, O'Neill, Pfeiffer, Potts, P. D. Smith, Trimmer, 
Werts, WyckoflP. 

For Abbett were Bale, De Ronde, Everitt, Feeney, Heppen- 
heimer, A. A. Higgine, Hoover, Keys, Marsh, Martin, McDer- 
mit, Mutchler, Norton, Patterson, Schmelz, Schroth, Trier, 
Weidenmayer. 

On the following day, when the two Houses voted separately 
for Senator, Mr. McPherson was elected in each, and all that it 
was necessary to do in the joint meeting of the next day was to 
read the journal and formally declare the result. When the 
House vote was taken, Mr. McDermit put Abbett in nomina- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 303 

tion in spite of the caucus decision favoring McPherson, and he 
probably would have voted for him but for the fact that Mr. 
Heppenheimer announced in the Governor's behalf that he was 
not a candidate. 

Mr. McPherson was the only Jerseyman who had been 
honored by a third term in the United States Senate. At the 
expiration (in 1895) of the term for which he was now elected 
he had served the State in the greatest legislative body in the 
world for eighteen continuous years. Mahlon Dickerson, who 
served from 1817 to 1833, was the only one whose service came 
anywhere near Mr. McPherson's in length. Jacob W. Miller, who 
served the twelve years between 1841 and 1853, and Samuel L. 
Southard, with two years to his credit between 1821 and 1823 
and nine years between 1833 and 1842, comprise the list of those 
who were honored with more than one term. John P. Stock- 
ton, however, was favored with two elections, from 1865 till he 
was unseated in 1866 by Alexander G. Cattell, and then for the 
full term between 1869 and 1875. 

Governor Abbett was not by any means as badly disappointed 
by his defeat this time as he had been by that of a few years 
before. He probably had had no large notion of his ability to 
distance Mr. McPherson, but he had set his eye determinedly on 
the Senatorship of 1893, when Mr. Blodgett's term was to 
expire ; and it was probably with a view of keeping himself in 
shape for that historical struggle that he had decided to 
measure swords with McPherson on this occasion. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

Which Shows the Origin of the Ballot-Box Stuffing Ring, ani> 

How its Invasion of Jersey City was Almost Defeated by 

Senator Peter D. Smith's Gunning Expedition 

into a South Jersey Swamp. 




NOTWITHSTANDING that its personnel was fairly 
good, the Legislature of 1889 won the reputation of 
being one of the most rapacious that had ever sat in 
Trenton. Even the newspapers of the party that 
dominated it declared that it " put the S'ate in the grip of the 
devil." Partisanship was its inspiration from the commence- 
ment of the session until its close. One of its acts devised an 
Assembly gerrymander that made that body even less repre- 
sentative than it had been allowed to be under the Republican 
gerrymander. It repealed some beneficial election laws that the 
Republican Legislature had passed — like the personal rf gist ra- 
tion act ; and other election laws of a more partisan flavor that 
the Republicans had enacted — like that aimed at the working- 
man's vote, which directed that the polls, ordinarily open until 
seven o'clock in the evening, should close at sundown. It devoted 
an entire week to the passage of a bill overturning the whole 
licensirg system in towns for the aid of a saloon-keeper in a 
Warren county village the authorities of which had refused to 
permit him to open his doors. But that was only a type of its 
legislation. There was scarcely a locality that escaped ransack- 
ing in the search for partisan spoils; and changes of system 
were made in local governments, as with a kaleidoscope, to 
secure the most trifling party advantages. The revolutionizing 
of the municipal system in Jersey City was the most important 
and far-reaching of its partisan activities in thi? direction. 
(304) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 305 

Governor Abbett's announcement, at the time of his formal 
racceptance of the gubernatorial nomination in 1883, that the 
men who did the work should have the offices, had been vital- 
ized by the bestowal of all the places within his gift upon the 
spoilsmen of the party. He had made his battle for the suprem- 
acy over the " kid-glove aristocrats " of the old State House 
regime in the name of the laboring men of the State and on the 
plea that they had been denied the participation in party coun- 
cils to which their voting strength entitled them. When the 
battle had been won on these lines, the honest wage-earners were 
pushed aside and the recognition he had asked for them was 
conferred in their name upon a breed of low-grade professional 
politicians who had nothing in common with them except that 
they were needy. It was not so much that he had lifted men 
of humble origin from lowly stations into positions of promi- 
nence and power, as that the men whom he thus elevated were 
of ignoble ambitions, self-seekers and in politics for what it was 
worth. The legislation that benefited that class had his readiest 
assent ; and through his countenance of the series of acts by which 
local governments everywhere were re-organized, he assisted this 
unworthy throng to reach out for the control of the communi- 
ties all over the State. 

No county in the State so quickly reflected this change of base 
in party politics as Hudson. Bills that had been passed during 
Mr. Abbett's first administration had enabled the ward-heeler 
and the creature of the slums there to crowd themselves into 
many of the public places ; and the local offices were overrun, 
as the State places were, by a rabble of cheap sports and bar- 
room loungers who looked to the spoils of place for their living. 

The social and political upheaval that brought this element to 
the front and relegated all the better men of the party to the 
rear in the county, was personified in the domination of four 
typical local leaders. They were Robert Davis, Dennis Mc- 
Laughlin, John P. Feeney and Patrick H. O'Neill. 

McLaughlin was a shrewd and frank kind of a fellow who 
ran a news stand and cigar store in a little shanty in the upper 
part of the city. His newspaper route extended in every direc- 

20 



306 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

tion through the tenement district that surrounded him. A man 
of sober habits, attentive to business, good-natured and genial^ 
he easily made friends, and his dingy little shop soon became 
thronged with those who managed the primaries in the district. 
When in these smoky councils they decided to make a long poll 
and a strong pull and a pull all together for a favorite seeker 
after a political place, it was " Denny " whom they sent out to 
be their spokesman, and from his success in securing appoint- 
ments he came to be looked upon eventually as something of a 
local boss. 

Feeney was one of his satellites. He, too, was whole-souled, 
with a rough and hearty air well calculated to make him popu- 
lar among his kind. There is a tradition that he was driving a 
wagon for a living when McLaughlin discovered him and took 
him to his bosom as a man after his own heart. McLaughlin 
had already succeeded in laughing and talking himself into an 
Assembly seat, and Feeney also managed to "jolly" himself 
into the Legislature of 1889 as the representative of the same 
district. 

Davis was a gas- measurer, whose business it was to take the 
state of the meters in the houses in the south part of the city for 
one of the local gas companies. He made his home in a shabby 
tenement on Bright street, in Jersey City. He was very short 
of stature and very stalwart of build, and had apparently been 
stood upon his legs too early in life for his physical beauty. He 
was very broad at the shoulders, and above them was a round 
bullet head, fronted with a shrewd, cold, livid face. He talked 
little but thought a good deal, and though a man of no educa- 
tion whatever, was looked upon as of exceptionally keen natural 
parts. 

O'Neill was glad to earn $60 a month as a messenger in the 
office of James H. Love, the Republican City Collector of 
Jersey City. He had been a drummer-boy during the Rebel- 
lion, and though a young man still, was yet pardonably proud 
to be known as a veteran of the war. The nature of their 
business brought him and Davis into contact with throngs of 
citizens, and, because of the help their wide acquaintanceship 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



307 



I 



enabled them to give incidentally to the candidates for office, they 
came to be looked upon in that particular part of the city as of 
some value among election-workers. With McLaughlin and 
Feeney in the north end of the city, and these two in the south 
end, The Big Four, as they were locally called, found it possi- 
ble, by combining their forces, to exert a decisive influence in 
the city and county conventions ; and eventually it came to them 
that they might utilize the power they thus found themselves 
possessed of for their own emolument and advancement. 

They were shrewd 
enough to see that the 
Sheriff's office was the 
pivotal one in the ma- 
nipulation of county 
affairs. The Sheriff is 
the executive officer 
of the courts. All of 
the court's orders are 
entrusted to him for 
execution. But his 
essential function in 
the development and 
perfecting of the 
scheme the combina- 
tion had in view was 
that of selecting the 
grand and petty juries. 
The grand juries are 
the agencies through which men guilty of crime are presented to 
the courts for trial. If the grand jury indicts, the courts can try. 
The failure of a grand jury to indict is an impassable barrier to 
the trial and punishment of any criminal, however guilty, or 
whatever his offense. 

In the selection of a grand jury the Sheriff therefore held 
great power. He could protect his friends by drawing juries 
that would refuse to indict them, and punish his enemies by 
having his grand juries present them even though they were 




Robert Davis. 



308 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

innocent. Grand juries in Hudson had been known to play 
with justice in this fashion; and when Robert Davis announced 
himself as a candidate for the nomination of the Democratic 
party for Sheriff, it was easily guessed that he was seeking the 
office for the opportunities it offered for just such an abuse of its 
great prerogatives. This suspicion was intensified when the 
character of the men who supported his candidacy was observed. 
Every man of shady occupation in the county was his hot advo- 
cate, and there seemed to be an instinctive realization among the 
people that he was going to the Sheriff's office as the pledged 
protector of vice. 

Public distrust was so deep and public alarm so great, that 
party lines were lost sight of in the agitation his candidacy pro- 
voked ; and, after a convention packed with his followers had 
made him the nominee of the Democratic party, bodies of Demo- 
crats flocked to the Republicans for escape from his election. 
As the county was Democratic, there was an idea that the nomi- 
nation of an independent Democrat against him might with- 
draw from his support a sufficient Democratic vote to insure the 
success of an opposition candidate. 

When the Republican county convention met, another con- 
vention representing- these drifting independents of the other 
party was in session to confer with them. The Republicans 
agreed to defer the selection of a candidate until they had 
learned the desire of the opposition Democrats, and the result 
was a fusion movement and the nomination of Cornelius J. 
Cronan as Davis's opponent. Cronan was a Democrat, who had 
served one term as Sheriff, but he had also done duty under 
Republican Sheriffs as their Chief Deputy with great accepta- 
bility; and the announcement of the coalition upon him was 
received with an enthusiasm that seemed to be a harbinger of 
its success. 

Davis was alarmed at the wholesale desertions from his party 
and he began to lay plans to offset them by taking from Cronan 
some of the Republican support upon which he counted. Before 
a week had gone by he had succeeded in getting together a little 
handful of Republican allies, who professed to be dissatisfied 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



309 



with the presence of a Democrat at the head of their county 
ticket. Setting up a hue and cry that Republican voters de- 
manded a straight Republican nominee, they entered the field 
with David W. Lawrence, once a city Police Magistrate, as their 
candidate. 

The battle conducted on these lines was one of the bitterest 
the county had ever seen. Lawrence divided the Republican 
vote with Cronan, but not to as large an extent as the Davis 
managers had anticipated ; and there was no doubt among the 
election experts when the 
polls closed that the anti- 
Davis fusion ticket — and 
Cronan — had won. All 
of the polling- places in 
the county had been 
manned by Davis's own 
appointees, however, and 
the figures returned by 
this suborned crowd 
showed the election of 
Davis by a narrow ma- 
jority. There was scarce 
a man in the county of 
either party but knew in 
his inner consciousness 
that Davis's heelers and 
adherents at the polls 
had fraudulently counted 

him in ; and hosts of Cronan's friends urged him to uncover 
the frauds by demanding from the court a recount of the ballots 
cast throughout the county. Not a man of large means, how- 
ever, Cronan did not feel that he could incur the pecuniary outlay 
that such an investigation would require, and so it happened 
that, within ten days^after he had been declared elected, Davis 
assumed the duties of the shrievalty of the county. 

His succession to the office was the signal for aggressive 
activity, in political and official circles, of whole rafts of dis- 




Cornelius J, Cronan. 



310 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

credited men. They had been tempted to the surface by the 
understanding that as long as they kept themselves " solid with 
the Sheriff," he would see that they were protected from the 
pursuit of the courts by his grand juries. No community had 
ever suffered such an invasion. The spectacle was one that 
enforced the demand for a change in the system of selecting 
members of this important body; and the Republican Legis- 
lature of 1888 took the function out of his hands and directed 
the Judges of the courts in the several counties to appoint 
special commissioners in each to name the grand juries. 
Almost the first thing that the Democrats did, on regaining con- 
trol of the Legislature in 1889, was to repeal the Commission 
act and restore the power of naming the grand juries to the 
Sheriff. 

Hudson county was thus again placed at the mercy of the 
gangs. Saloon doors were thrown wide open on Sunday, and 
the ears of passing church people were offended by the sound of 
clicking glasses and the noisy revelry of the roystering crowds 
within. Gambling- houses sprouted up all over. Pool- sellers, 
banished from New York, ran their places with swinging doors 
on the chief thoroughfares. Policy-shops were on every hand. 
Sharks and sharpers trapped the unwary at every corner. 

And no one was ever brought to justice. 

The Jersey City charter incident of the legislation of 1889 
gives color to the suspicion that the protection of these smaller 
irregularities was not the chief object for which the control of 
the Sheriff's office had been seized. The subsequent history of 
events scarce leaves room for doubt that the greater end they 
had in view was the invasion of the municipal treasuries. Jer- 
sey City, with her complicated municipal system that gave 
employment to a small army of retainers and placemen, and her 
.^100,000,000 gf taxable assets, became the object of a most 
earnest and determined attack. The combined Four had 
already succeeded in securing the control of the chief of the 
city offices by the advancement of Orestes Cleveland to the 
Mayoralty, and now, in 1889, with a Legislature of their own 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 311 

kind to aid them, they began to lay their plans to make him the 
central power in the management of city affairs. 

Mr. Cleveland was no longer the rich and powerful man he 
had been. The Dixon Crucible Company, which had yielded 
him a large income, had been led into financial embarrassments 
and under circumstances which led Mr. Cleveland to prudently 
seclude himself from the public eye. When, after the lapse of 
several years, he thought he might emerge from the cloud which 
had enveloped the failure, he started out to rehabilitate himself 
by seeking political positions. The first one within reach at the 
time was the Jersey City Mayoralty. Nominations for that 
office had not gone by favor, but, though a poor man and with- 
out money to spend, Mr. Cleveland was not discouraged in his 
pursuit of that shining distinction. He went among "the 
boys " who had been the recipients of his hospitality in his 
more prosperous days, reminding them of what he had done for 
them, and made a sympathetic canvass among them for their aid 
and support. " The boys " were not wholly ungrateful, and this 
" handkerchief campaign," as they jocularly called it, was a 
success. He was given the nomination and elected. And, in 
their plans for the seizure of the city government now, they 
felt assured of his co-operation. 

The device by which they expected to work out their aim 
contemplated the displacement of the Republican hold-over offi- 
cials who still stood guard at the doors of the treasury, and the 
replacing of them with a more complacent lot of friends of 
their own whom he stood ready to appoint at their bidding. 
This could be easily enough accomplished by the passage of an 
act ending the terms of all the men in the public places in the 
city and conferring upon the Mayor the power of naming their 
successors. 

The conditions were not unfavorable to such a revolution in 
the municipal system. The government in Jersey City was still 
a modified form of the old system of legislative local commis- 
sions with which the Republican ring of the early 'TO's had 
taken possession of the city. The commissions were yet in con- 
trol of each department — not appointed, as at the start, in a 



312 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

partisan joint meeting at Trenton — elected nominally, but upon 
the basis of a partisan Republican gerrymander of the city 
wards that enabled the Republicans to hold control of them. 
Their domination was distasteful to the overwhelming Demo- 
cratic sentiment of the citizens, and there had long been a desul- 
tory and intermittent series of agitations for a change that would 
enable the party in the majority to come by its own. The city's- 
new invaders utilized this sentiment and intensified it by pre- 
arranged newspaper clamor till it had crystallized ; and then 
they began to frame a new charter for the city upon the lines 
most agreeable to their purposes. 

Brooklyn had just taken on the one-man form of government 
they had in mind, and Seth Low's Mayoralty there had made 
the system so popular that it was presumed Jersey City would 
eagerly embrace it. There was yet the chance that the revelries 
of waste and corruption in which they expected to indulge 
might arouse the people to put an end to the saturnalia by elect- 
ing a Mayor who would refuse to serve them. But suppose the 
ring were to re-elect Cleveland by sending confederates who 
would stuff the ballot-boxes in his interest to the polling-places 
when the new election came around ! What could the people 
do about it ? 

Well, they could send the ballot-box stuffers to State Prison. 
But that contingency was already met by the fact that the grand 
jurors who must indict them and the petty jurors who must 
convict them were to be chosen by a Sheriff in sympathy with 
them ; and, of course, he would protect his own. 

The plot had been carefully worked out to these conclusions 
when the smooth-tongued Edwards, representing Hudson county 
in the State Senate, submitted the One- Man-Power bill to his 
Democratic colleagues from Jersey City in the Assembly. He 
found them in a hesitating frame of mind. Speaker Hudspeth 
looked askance at it. Others of the local delegation refused to 
consider it till they learned how it was going to profit them per- 
sonally. They were promised one office after another under the 
re-organized government for their votes, and the bill was finally 
progressed toward enactment. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



313 



The moment it reached the committee-room, it encountered 
another obstacle. To evade the State Constitution's requirement 
that all municipal legislation shall be by general act, Senator 
Edwards had drawn the bill in general form. In that shape it 
overturned not only the local government of Jersey City but 
the local government of Newark as well. And Newark was 
not yet prepared to thus place herself at the mercy of a single 
man — though later a similar group of public managers led her 
into the same trap. But just now things were not ripe for the- 
institution of the system 



iiL VI, 




there, and her members 
would consent to no 
change in her form of 
government. The diffi- 
culty was eventually 
overcome by an amend- 
ment that the act should 
be effective only in the 
cities that accepted it by 
popular vote. Newark 
would take no step 
toward accepting it) 
and it would not reach 
her. The Jersey City 
plotters were prepared 
to see it submitted to 
popular vote at the 
charter election there and put through at all hazards. 

The charter election was to be held on Tuesday, April 3d. 
It was late in March before it had been found possible to adjust 
all differences and start the bill on its way through the Assembly. 
Its passage there was provokingly slow, and it was not till the 
Thursday before the charter election that it was put through the 
stage of final passage in the Assembly Chamber. It was necessary 
that sufficient public notice of the special vote should be given. It 
had been reduced to three days. Only on the assumption that the 
bill could be pushed through the Senate on the following day was 



William D. Edwards. 



314 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 




even three days' notice possible. The Assembly Clerk rushed 
the act to the Senate Chamber at once. The Republicans 
objected to its immediate consideration, and under the rules it 
had to lay over without action till the next day. Then a single 
objection could avail to prevent its being put through two read- 
ings in one day, and the anxious crew were fearful that it could 
not be enacted in time for the charter election. They had noth- 
ing to do, when the objection to its immediate consideration was 
made, but to let it cool for a day and trust to luck for the rest. 

Friday came all too 
slowly for them, and 
when it broke they 
learned to their con- 
sternation that Senator 
Peter D. Smith, of Sus- 
sex, was not among the 
present. The Senate 
had eleven Democrats 
and ten Republicans in 
it. With Smith out of 
his seat, the Senate was 
tied politically, and the 
passage of the bill was 
impossible. 

No one knew where 
Smith was. Colonel 
Dickinson, the chief of 
the Republican opponents of the" bill, laughingly confessed 
to the foiled plotters that he had hidden Smith in a dis- 
tant woods where he could not be found. Messengers were 
scurried in all directions for^ him. They came back without 
tidings. Mrs. Smith was importuned by telegraph to flash 
back his address with the return spark. She only answered 
that the dispatch of inquiry was the first intimation she had 
had that he was not in Trenton. The day had advanced to 
noon before they learned that he had gone on a hunting expe- 
dition into the pines near Manahawken, in Ocean county. 




John P. Feeney. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 315 

Dispatches sent to him there brought no response, and Assembly- 
men Feeney and O'Neill were deputed to go after him. 

It was a circuitous route to Manahawken from Trenton. 
Four or five changes of cars at little cross-road stations were 
necessary. To pass either one of these change stations was to 
be carried into Philadelphia or landed at some inaccessible 
point in Cumberland county. Senator Pfeiffer, of Camden, 
accompanied them to see that they missed none of the necessary 
connections. They did not fail to observe as they traveled, that 
Senator Cranmer, of Ocean, one of the Republican minority, 
was on the same train, and that as often as they changed he 
changed. He protested that he was merely on his way home 
for the recess, " though when we asked him one time," said 
O'Neill, in telling the story, " how to go to Manahawken, he 
gave us a crooked steer." 

Chaperoned by the posted Camden Senator, the two anxious 
statesmen reached Manahawken, only to find that the man they 
sought was buried in the marshes at Harvey Cedars, miles and 
miles beyond. It was then nine o'clock at night. The last 
train had left and the last of the night-owls that congregated 
at the tavern were preparing to go to their cabins. 

" I was interested to learn that the gentleman who kept the 
hotel was named Lippincott," O'Neill remarked, " and that he 
was a cousin of Judge Job Lippincott. I told him my story, 
but he said he could think of no way to help me out. 

" * Can't we walk to Harvey Cedars?' I asked him. 

" ' Why, it's pitch dark,' was his answer, * and in your path is 
a trestle bridge a mile long, with a draw two hundred feet wide 
that's always open at night. If you could pick your way 
through the woods to the bridge, you'd fall through the sleepers 
when you reached it.' 

"A hand-car lay on the track near the tavern. Why not 
use that ? The man in whose care it had been left refused to 
allow it to be moved. We telegraphed to the President of the 
Road for his consent, and his answering dispatch placed the car 
at our service. When everything was in readiness, we leaped 
to the top of the car platform. The night was as cold as it was 



I 



316 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

dark. Several insisted on going with us, and there were nine 
men crowded on that flat-car into a space scarcely large enough 
for four. As the motor-men pumped at the handle that drove 
the machine they were in danger of knocking one of us oft* with 
their see- sawing arms and elbows. There was not a ray of light, 
and we had to call the roll every five minutes to assure ourselves 
that no one had dropped his grip in the cold and been lost in 
the dark. The ripple of the waters alone admonished us when 
we reached the bridge. One of our attendants almost lost 
his life climbing down to use the key that swung the draw to. 
He did it and we passed on in safety. It took us two hours 
then to get into Harvey Cedars. When we struck the inn 
there, the bar-room was alive with fishermen and hazy with the 
smoke of their pipes. Smith was not among them. 

" * Where is he ? ' we asked. 

" ' In bed,' was the response. 

" Well, now, it didn't take us long to rout him out, and bid 
him prepare to go back with us to Manahawken on that hand- 
car. Hunting-boots and game-bag and corduroy coat and short 
pants were hustled on him in a twinkling, and stopping only for 
a warm supper we hastened back to the cross-roads station at 
Manahawken with him." 

Smith explained on his way back that Senate President Werts 
had on Thursday granted him a leave of absence, and that he 
had left on his hunting expedition without the remotest idea 
that his services would be needed during the week again. An 
hour after he had been hurried away from the Cedars, a yacht 
chartered by the Republicans sailed to the landing to carry him 
even farther off from his pursuers. 

It was usual for the Senate to close its session for the week 
on Thursday. It had been held over till Friday this week to act 
on the charter measure. It was delayed till Saturday to await 
Smith. The Sussex Senator was an object of more than politi- 
cal interest when he reached the capitol building. He was in 
his unique hunting costume when he walked to his seat in the 
Senate Chamber between twelve and one o'clock on that fateful 
Saturday to say " aye " to the passage of the new charter and 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 317 

make the eleventh vote needed to send it to the Governor's 
hands. Couriers hastened with the act to the Executive Cham- 
ber, and within twenty minutes it had received Governor Green's 
signature. 

It was a serious legal question whether, between that noon of 
Saturday and the election Tuesday following, the three days' 
notice of the election which the bill required was possible. But 
Mayor Cleveland's brother, Jeremiah B. Cleveland, dashed off 
to a train with the act and arrived in Jersey City between three 
and four o'clock. It was necessary that City Clerk John E. 
Scott should publish the notice in the local papers of that after- 
noon to be at all within the meaning of the law. The papers 
had all gone to press for the day. But their editors were per- 
suaded to run extra editions to make the notice public. Popular 
suspicion had been aroused by the eagerness and precipitancy 
with which the scheme was being perfected, and the Sunday 
and Monday left for discussion among them showed a marked 
sentiment against it. But there were the men at the election 
boxes to make up any deficiency in the vote, and when the 
ballots had been counted on Tuesday night an apparent majority 
in favor of the acceptance of the new form of government was 
revealed by the face of the returns. 

Mayor Cleveland was now master of the situation. He had 
every office in the city at his disposal. If he could have risen 
to the magnitude of his opportunities, he would have won lasting 
honor for himself and conferred lasting glory upon Jersey City. 
But he was so tethered around with engagements and pledges 
that he had no free will in the formation of the new govern- 
ment ; and he placed the gang that had passed the bill in con- 
trol. He began by rewarding the men who had voted for it 
in the two Houses. Senator Edwards was made Corporation 
Counsel and Speaker Hudspeth Corporation Attorney. Assem- 
blyman Feeney was placed in control of the Police Department. 
Assemblyman O'Neill was made chief of the office in which he 
had been serving as a messenger. Assemblyman Norton was 
given a police court clerkship. A friend of Assemblyman 
Heppenheimer was made a member of the Tax Board. Assem- 



318 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



blyman Peter T. Donaelly alone refused to receive any reward 
for his vote. The rest of the public places were filled with con- 
federates of the Ring, and the plot to seize possession of the city 
treasury was consummated by success. 

All their plans would have been nipped in the bud by the 
election of a Mayor not in sympathy with them, in the spring 
of the following year, when Mr. Cleveland's term expired. 

With the aid of a 




-«fe»^ 



packed convention. 
Mayor Cleveland was 
put in nomination 
again. There were 
signs of revolt on all 
sides, and in the belief 
that the anti-ring 
Democracy would aid 
their candidate, the 
Republicans were un- 
usually careful in se- 
lecting their nominee. 
George F. Perkins, a 
wealthy Bergen ave- 
nue business man, was 
chosen ; and it became 
an open secret, after 
Perkins had failed of 
election, that Mr. 
Cleveland was saved 
from defeat only by 
the frauds of exposed 
ballot-box stuffers. 
It was not till the gangs of plunderers broke into two factions 
two years later, and engaged in a quarrel over the spoils of 
place, that the people succeeded in taking the control of public 
affairs out of the hands of the lawless mob by the election of 
Colonel P. F. Wanser to the Mayoralty. 

This consummation was not reached, however till most of the 




Patrick H. O'Neill. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 319 

members of the combine had grown rich. Feeney figured as 
the purchaser of mortgages and of houses. Davis moved from 
the tenement attic in which he had been making his home to a 
home all alone by himself on Grove street. O'Neill, with a lively 
sense of the hardships with which the want of an education had 
surrounded his own career, sent his children to the aristocratic 
schools. The decline of the public morals was shown by the 
acclaim with which the Y. M. C. A. of the city hailed him to 
its membership when he consented to join. McLaughlin bought 
whole rows of brownstone fronts, and, closing his little shop on 
Pavonia avenue, moved to a handsome and capacious brown- 
stone front on Hamilton Park, though it must be said for him 
that his wealth came from the race-tracks and not from partici- 
pation in public plunder. What was true of them was also true 
of their satellites in smaller measure. Bar-room loungers of the 
era before the inauguration of this carnival of corruption in- 
dulged in champagne sprees and rode in chaises. 



I 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

'Wherein General Grubb Measured Lances with Governor Abbett, 

AFTER John Y. Foster and J. Frank Fort Had Crossed Swords 

ON the Indorsement of the Locai, Option Legislation. 




j^|iHE vicious atmosphere that was thus made to overspread 
Jersey City soon enveloped most of the other munici- 
palities. Parvenu leaders sprang up everywhere. En- 
trenched by being made the recognized dispensers of 
State patronage, they became the heroes of the heelers and 
of the parasites of the party. To perpetuate their dominion 
they linked arms with everything else that was disrepu- 
table in the State, 
in a movement to cap- 
ture the new Governor 
and to control the new 
Legislature. Several 
new race- tracks, that in- 
vited uncanny crowds 
which the people were 
disposed to drive back, 
had been planted all 
over the State's soil and 
the jockeys became their 
allies. The liquor men 
dissatisfied with the ex- 
isting laws governing the 
traffic, joined in, in the 
hope of securing some- 
thing more favorable. 
Leon Abbett, having introduced the new throng to the scene 
of action, was now asked to take the Governorship again to lead 
(320) 




Gen. E. Burd Grubb, 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 321 



them in their new conquests. He was a consenting party for 
the reason that, at the expiration in 1893 of the term for which 
it was proposed to nominate him, Rufus Blodgett's successor in 
the United States Senate was to be chosen. To be at the head 
of the State was to command opportunities and dispense pat- 
ronage that would aid him to the achievement of his ambition 
to be that successor himself. 

When the Democratic convention met in Trenton, in Sep- 
tember, 1889, to name the Democratic candidate for Governor, 
his wa3 the only name talked of among the party workers. 
There was but one trifling interruption of the programme. An 
Anti-Ring organization that had been formed in Hudson county 
. had elected delegates to the State convention. Led by William 
B. Rankin, a Philadelphia politician who had been Governor of 
Washington Territory under Buchanan and finally settled down 
in Jersey City, and by ex- Speaker Rudolph F. Rabe, who broke 
a privacy of many years only to do battle against the crime 
that had become rampant in the county, this little handful of 
zealots demanded recognition at the hands of the convention as 
the representatives of the honest Democrats of the county. 
They expected to be unceremoniously barred out, and their ex- 
pectation was not disappointed. They retired in high dudgeon, 
threatening all sorts of awful things ; but after the convention 
had by acclamation put Abbett in renomination they gave him 
their formal indorsement. 

The Republicans held their convention a week later, for the 
selection of a candidate with whom to confront Abbett. The 
signs of victory were not discouraging, and several ambitious 
lights of the party were aspirants for the convention's favor. 
Frank A. Magowan, who had carried the Democratic city of 
Trenton as a Republican candidate for Mayor, was the most 
aggressive of them all. John Kean, of Union, was another 
who beamed smilingly upon the assembled delegates. General 
Sewell, who was a master hand in turning the drift of the tide, 
was favorable to neither. He was inclined to humor the aspira- 
tions of General Edward Burd Grubb, a Spanish- faced grandee 
with Dundreary side- whiskers, who lived on a baronial estate in 

21 



322 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



/<*!ft 



Burlington county. Essex county had sounded the tocsin of 
war upon General Sewell's supremacy, because he had slighted 
one of her ambitious sons (William R. Williams) to make ex- 
Senator Large, of Hunterdon county, the Collector of the fed- 
eral revenue in the north section of the State; and she was 
planning to spring ex- Congressman George A. Halsey upon the 
convention. But General Sewell was at the helm and he held 
the rudder chain with a firm hand. Captain Kirkbride, a Bur- 
lington blacksmith, won State- wide renown as an orator for the 
stirring speech in which he presented General Grubb's name to 

the convention and car- 
ried him triumphantly to 
the head of the ticket. 
\ The delegates had more 

/ IM trouble in laying down 

the line of battle than in 
selecting the man who 
was to be in command. 
The local option question 
was a disturbing factor 
when the platform on 
which General Grubb was 
to stand fell under con- 
sideration. The political 
results of that move had 
^ not been gratifying to 

John Y. Foster. Republican hopes. One 

Legislature had been sac- 
rificed to it, and it menaced the party with the entire loss of its 
prestige. Especially did the Esses delegation fear the effect iu 
that county of an adhesion to the policy of that bill by the party 
of the State. 

It was reserved for two Essex men to marshal the opposing 
forces when the issue was before the convention for settlement. 
John Y. Foster had been the warm advocate of local option when 
it was first proposed. He was its earnest and eloquent champion 
still. Editor, publicist and churchman, he had stood for all 




MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



323 



that was best and highest in the aims and purposes of the Re- 
publican party. His persuasive oratory had made him a force- 
ful factor in its councils ; and he went to Trenton hoping to 
press through the convention a subtly-framed resolution indorsing 
the temperance legislation of 1888, which he carried in his pocket. 
Ex- Judge J. Frank Fort was something of a churchman, too, 
out at his home in East Orange, but when he reached his law office 
in Newark he was apt to take a politician's view of things. 
The active practice of a successful lawyer disposes one to more 
worldly conceits than 
he who lives among the 
books might be expected 
to indulge. Judge 
Fort had additional rea- 
sons for standing in op- 
position to the attitude 
Mr. Foster hoped to 
induce the convention 
to assume on this par- 
ticular question. Rich 
brewers, who had no 
tender sympathies with 
teetotalism, were among 
his clients. He insisted 
that an attempt to cram 
local option down the 
throat of the party 
would choke it — that 

if it was done Essex at any rate would be hopelessly beyond 
reach ; and he insisted that the platform, if it did not specifically 
disavow that particular tenet, should at least be prudently silent 
concerning it. The discussion, started in Essex, found echoes 
in other counties j and there was so much protest on all sides 
against the policy of the Local Option bill that, to emphasize the 
opposition, Judge Fort was made the permanent Chairman of 
the convention. The plank in the platform dealt with the all- 
absorbing question after all with so much indecision that, when 




J. Frank Fort. 



I 



324 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

it was read, the Essex delegation broke into a clamor of pro- 
tests, and Henry A. Potter, their Chairman, felt called upon to 
announce for his colleagues that Essex voted for its adoption 
" only on the understanding that it means high license alone,, 
and asks that this declaration of her construction of it be made 
part of the record." 

The campaign thus inaugurated was the second upon which 
ex- Senator Hobart, as Chairman of the Republican State Com- 
mittee, had entered with high hope of success. The manage- 
ment on the other side was in the hands of Allan L. McDer- 
mott as Chairman of the Democratic State Committee. It pro- 
gressed with energy on both sides and shifting prospects of suc- 
cess. The Burlington General went up to the Hackensack 
river with an enormous vote. The result depended wholly 
upon what Hudson county had done. And there the returns 
were gathered from the polling- places with irritating slowness. 
It was long after the midnight that followed election day when 
enough had been gathered to indicate that the county had rolled 
up an unprecedented majority of nearly 14,000 in Governor 
Abbett's favor, and that he had been elected for the second time 
to preside over the destinies of the State. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

'Senator Gardner takes Occasion here to Prove the Truth 

that's in a Jest, and Mr. Stuhr makes a Eecord as 

the Briefest Senator in History. 



4S5 



I 



"jglpHE ceremonies attending the inauguration of Governor 

Abbett drew as enormous a concourse of citizens to 

' p Taylor Opera House in the middle of January, 1890, 

as that which had gathered to see him take the oath of 

oflBce in 1884. Clubs and delegations flocked to Trenton from 

all over, and bodies of men even organized especially to be of 

the inauguration participants. 

Admission to the platform, to the boxes, to the main audi- 
torium and to the galleries was by card. The multitudes were 
pouring in at every opening, when just before noon the music of 
an approaching band came from the street. As it turned into 
the lobby the tooting became more and more distinct. Then 
there succeeded a great clatter of feet on the staircases leading 
aloft. The tooters were evidently marshaling a visiting throng 
up into the galleries ; and after a time the head of a bugler 
shot above the landing in a corner of the upper gallery into the 
view of those upon the stage. The drummer and more buglers 
and more drummers emerged from the darkness. A throng of 
Hudson county men, come to jubilate, were in their wake. A 
blue guidon, with gilded figures blazoned on it, fluttered in the 
van from a tall pole. The crowd circled around the aisles and 
followed the banner down the middle entree to the front seats, 
and planted it in the very center of the balcony in conspicuous 
view. 

HUDSON 13,515 

was the boast gilded upon its face. The figures were known to 
^very public man in the State. The crowd recognized them at 

(325) 



326 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



a glance as representing the majority that had been given to 
Abbett over Grubb by the Hudson county canvassing boards. 
That majority had been a nine-days' wonder all over the State, 
and the tradition was read on every hand with covert insinua- 
tions while Governor Abbett read his Inaugural Address. 

"The best sentiment of the country," the newly-installed 
Governor began, with that brazen device staring straight at him, 
" demands ballot reform and honest elections." 

"The highest aim of all parties is good government," he 

concluded, with that 
brazen device still star- 
ing straight at him, 
" and this cannot be 
secured without honest 
elections." 

A furtive breeze that 
crept in through the 
open windows caught 
up a corner of the blue 
guidon as he hurled 
these caustic platitudes 
at it, and curled it over 
and over. The end 
one of the gilded fig- 
ures was hidden be- 
neath the silken folds. 
As the breeze toyed 
with the fluttering silk 
a second figure was 
concealed from view. Then with a grand sweep the wind gave 
the fabric a final twist and none but the fateful " 13 " remained 
visible. 

"See ! " exclaimed the witty Senator Werts to the company of 
statesmen who shared one of the boxes with him, as he pointed 
up to it, " see how Abbett's majority shrinks as he advocates 
ballot reform." 

Many a truth is spoken in jest ; and subsequent events gave 




William C. Heppenheimer. 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 327 

an air of prophecy to this passing quip. The Legislature that 
had assembled at the State Houee to keep the new Governor 
company was divided politically — the House was Democratic^ 
with William C. Heppenheimer, of Hudson, for Speaker ; the 
Senate, with General H. M. Nevius, of Monmouth, in the chair, 
had a working majority of Republicans. 

The same poll that had elected Abbett had given Hudson's 
seat in the Senate to Edward F. McDonald. The contest at the 
polls that had resulted in his election had been an exciting one.^ 
The feeling in the county that the leaders who ran the conven- 
tions were not all they should be and that they were leagued 
for evil, had grown apace. McDonald was panoplied with an 
unassailable reputation for probity. He was a young man of 
robust build, with a robust conscience, and a robust voice that 
made him the idol of the throngs that flocked to the hustings. 
His erratic political course, which made him now the ally and 
now the opponent of the powers in control, reflected the sturdy 
independence of his nature. He would be no man's follower. 
It was his prerogative to lead, and their efforts in the past to 
make him bend his neck to the yoke had often driven him into 
open defiance of the managers of his party's machine. He had 
been Assemblyman, Treasurer of the Town of Harrison where 
he lived, the dictator of county affairs from his chair as Director- 
at-Large of the Board of Freeholders ; and then he had refused' 
to bend the knee to the bosses who assumed to control him, and 
had even been so much at variance with his party as to have 
served as an Elector on the Butler Third Party ticket in the 
Presidential campaign of 1884. 

It was because the Hudson managers feared defeat if they put 
one of their recognized tools in nomination, that they had been 
driven to the necessity of placing him on their ticket in this 
State Senatorial contest. But even his sturdy independence and 
admiration of his personal qualities could not obscure the fact 
that the ring the people had learned to distrust, to fear in fact, 
had put him in the field. He was met, therefore, by just such 
a movement as that which had put Cronan to the front in the 



I 



-328 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



campaign in which Robert Davis had made the shrievalty of 
the county. 

The good men of the Democratic party could not reconcile 
themselves to the idea of aiding the ring to promote even him ; 
and they looked to the Republicans to lead a non-partisan cam- 
paign against him. An independent Democratic organization 
was formed to negotiate with the Republicans for a union of 

clean hands in a 
common struggle 
against the spoils- 
men again. They 
went in convention 
at the same hour at 
which the Repub- 
licans assembled to 
select their nominee 
for Senator. Con- 
ference committees 
were appointed. 
Views were ex- 
changed. Con- 
vinced that a 
straight party nomi- 
nation could bring 
them no victory, 
the Republicans 
agreed to give their 
indorsement to the 
candidate their 
Democratic allies 
should agree upon. So it was that William S. Stuhr, an inde- 
pendent Democrat, was made the Fusion candidate against Mr. 
McDonald. 

Stuhr was almost entirely unknown in politics. His father 
had been a busy factor in politics and public affairs for years in 
Hoboken. Young Stuhr himself was a young man just enter- 
ing upon the practice of the law. But it was believed that the 




William S. Stuhr. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 329 

wide acquaintance his father enjoyed among the Germans of 
the county would be a valuable aid to him in the coming 
struggle. 

The canvass was a fierce and a bitter one. The chances were 
all against Stuhr because, as the reckless ring- men were fond of 
saying in their own vernacular " We have the boxes," and the 
returns sent in by them from the election places gave the Demo- 
cratic ticket which they had espoused phenomenal majorities. 
These were surprising as well as phenomenal, because the drift 
of public sentiment had indicated that if the Democratic candi- 
dates could succeed at all in the county their majorities would 
be inappreciably small ones. Six thousand would have been a 
generous majority under the most favorable circumstances. 
When at the close of the polls on this election night of 1889 it 
was announced that Abbett had carried the county by close on 
to 14,000 majority and that McDonald had won it by an equally 
overwhelming vote, the figures were so incredible that the people 
accepted them as furnishing the proofs in themselves of monu- 
mental frauds in the taking and in the count of the votes. 

Convinced that he had been cheated by the election officers, 
Stuhr prepared to contest McDonald's right to the seat. On 
the organization day of the Senate, Senator Roe, of Gloucester, 
presented a protest on Stuhr's behalf against the admission of 
Mr. McDonald to the privilege of membership ; but the Secate 
permitted McDonald to be sworn on his credentials, and he was 
allowed to act pending the inquiry by the Senate Committee on 
Elections. President Nevius made Mr. Roe one of the mem- 
bers of that committee ; Senator Gardner, of Atlantic, was given 
its Chairmanship, and the showy Senator Adrain, of Middlesex, 
was its Democratic member. 

The committee directed William S. Sharp, the painstaking 
Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, to remove all the boxes, into 
which the voters of Hudson county had dropped their ballots, 
to the State House and began to make an excursion through 
them. Ex- Assemblyman William H. Corbin represented the 
committee at the hearings, which extended over several months. 
Ex- Judge William T. Hoffman assisted him. Mr. McDonald 



I 



330 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



was represented by ex- Judge A. Q Garretson, a keen- minded 
lawyer of Jersey City. 

The first of the boxes that was opened revealed the enormity 
of the crime against the suffrage of which the Democratic ring 
in Hudson had been guilty. The disclosures were startling ; 
and every box subsequently opened furnished a new sensation. 
Almost every ballot removed from the boxes bore the stamp not 
merely of fraud but of a conspiracy as broad as the county 
itself. The milling and stamping were not such as the machinery 

of the boxes could have 
produced. Poll- books 
did not agree with 
registry- books. Tally- 
sheets failed to cor- 
roborate the other rec- 
ords of the boxes. 
The evidences of a 
stupendous crime were 
everywhere. 

When it had com- 
pleted its startling ex- 
cursion through thfr 
ballot-boxes the com- 
mittee met in Chancery 
Chambers in the 
brown-stone building 
of the First National 
Bank in Jersey City, 
and prosecuted equally 
fruitful explorations into the registry and poll-lists. The testi- 
mony of one witness revealed a passing glimpse of a coach that 
made the rounds of the election booths in Jersey City before 
the hour for the opening of the polls, with a lot of rolls of 
paper. The committee intimated its belief that these rolls of 
paper were lists of names for the use of the repeaters employed 
by the ring and the ballot-box stuffers. 

The committee engaged a corps of detectives, and, placing 




John J. Gardner. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 331 



them at the service of Captain John Graham, a constable of 
stalwart build and a courage that knew no fear, directed him to 
learn if the men whose names appeared on the registry-lists as 
of those who intended to vote, and if others whose names ap- 
peared on the poll-lists as of those who had voted, really lived 
at the places of residence assigned to them in the records. The 
Captain was met at every stage of his inquiry with threats of 
violence at the hands of the hunted ringsters, but he went on 
fearlessly with his task. Every day he sent to the witness stand 
widows to testify that their husbands, recorded as having voted, 
had lain in their shrouds for years, and housekeepers to declare 
that they had never had the pleasure of the acquaintance of 
scores of men recorded as sharing their homes with them. 
Fortunate, indeed, was it for the weak- nerved men and the 
hysterical women of the county that they knew nothing of a 
ghostly invasion of the county indicated by the poll-lists till it 
was all over and the risen cadavers of a past voting era had 
slunk back in their shrouds to their eternal slumbers agaiu. 
Scores of men were recorded as having voted from saloons not 
large enough to have afforded them even standing-room. If 
the record of those lists had been true, the canal boats must 
have been alive with eager suiFragists, and the open lots scat- 
tered through the county must have been as populous as mass 
meetings. Of other hundreds whose names figured among the 
voters, no trace, either in the past or present, could be secured. 
Dishonest election officers had used the names of these dead and 
absent and mythical citizens to cover their frauds. As they had 
crowded handfuls of bogus and fraudulent ballots into the 
boxes, they had written as many false names on the lists of voters 
as there were bogus and fraudulent ballots. 

The poll-books in some of the polling precincts represented 
whole lines of citizens as haviog voted in precisely the same 
order in which, ten days before, they had registered ; and in 
others that hosts of Mr. A's and hosts of Mr. B's and hosts of 
Mr. C's had followed each other ti the polls in an alphabetical 
procession that could not have been more methodical if they had 
stepped out of a directory. 



332 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 




The palpable rascalities that had produced these freaks of 
record were aided and facilitated, it was shown, by violence and 
thuggery at the polling- places. Voters by the score told how 
they had been intimidated and driven away from the booths by 
bullies and roughs. Scores of others drew pictures of the vio- 
lence that made them afraid to keep watch of the election experts 
while the count of the vote was in progress. In one of the 
precincts, the vote had been taken at an engine-house where 
every employe was an appointee of the ring. While a crowd of 
on-lookers wag scrutinizing the canvass of the ballots in the gang- 
way, the electric gong 
was struck. Loosened 
from their stalls, the 
horses scampered 
through the throng to 
their places before the 
engine, and the crowd 
scattered in every di- 
rection to avoid being 
'> trampled under their 
■^^ hoofs. The election 
officers made the excite- 
' ment a pretext for car- 
rying the box to a room 
overhead, and when 
the watchers recovered 
their breath and tried 
to follow them, a dozen 
ring policemen fought them down the staircase again with their 
clubs. The box, on being opened in the Gardner investigation, 
was found to be reeking with the evidences of the rascality the 
incident had been planned to cover. 

It took the committee several weeks to complete the startling 
disclosures. The Senate and House took a recess to await its 
finding. Senators Gardner and Rue joined in a report declaring 
that 1,764 irregular tissue ballots had been discovered in the 
several boxes ; that false voting lists had been employed ; that 




\ 






\' 



Edward F. McDonald. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 333 

the polls had been surrounded by ruflfians to intimidate honest 
voters, sixteen ring policemen being engaged at one polling- 
place to prevent the seating of a Republican election clerk ; that 
the most startling of frauds had been committed with the most 
audacious insolence ; that repeaters had overrun the city. And 
they computed that the vote of the county had been swollen by 
the use of 10,000 or more fraudulent ballots. 

The honest vote of the county had been so clouded and viti- 
ated by these reckless villainies of the crowd that it was impos- 
sible to reach a conclusion as to what the verdict of the people 
had been, and the conservative expectation was that the commit- 
tee would declare that there had been no election in the county. 
The majority report figured, however, that the frauds were all 
against Stuhr, and that they were sufficient to have defeated his 
election. They declared, therefore, that Mr. McDonald was not 
a qualified member of the Senate, and awarded the seat from 
Hudson to his opponent ; and on the last day of the session 
Stuhr was admitted to the chair, notwithstanding the luminous 
argument Senator Adrain, the third member of the committee, 
made in Mr. McDonald's behalf under cover of a minority 
report. 

The Democrats came into control of the Senate the following 
year (1891). The first matter that engaged its attention was the 
ousting of Stuhr and the re-seating of Mr. McDonald. Senator 
Werts, of Morris, on the opening day offered a resolution recit- 
ing that the admission of Stuhr to the seat " was without testi- 
mony to authorize or justify it," and declaring for a reconsider- 
ation of the action of the Senate of 1890. When Senator Stuhr 
raised the point of order that a motion to reconsider was not 
parliamentarily possible after the expiration of twenty- four 
hours. Senator Adrain, who was in the chair, overruled it. Mr. 
Stuhr argued then that his case was res adjudicata, and that the 
Senate could not traverse the issue again. Senator Werts re- 
torted that such a thing as res adjudicata was unknown to 
parliamentary law, and, on the assumption that the Senate is not 
a continuous body, he declared that the Senate of 1891 had the 
same right to judge of the election, qualifications and return of 



i 



334 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



its members as the Senate of 1890 had. Senator Gardner epi- 
grammatically responded that the decision in Stuhr's favor in 
1890 had not been a parliamentary proceeding — it was a judicial 
determination that the Senate of 1891 had no power to interfere 
with ; and Mr. Stuhr closed the discussion with an elaborate 
legal argument in support of his contention that, seated once 
after a contest, he was entitled to serve to the end of the term. 
The arguments all went for nothing, however. Senator Werts's 
resolution prevailed by a vote of 13 to 7, and Mr. McDonald 
took his seat in the Senate again, while friends and partisans 
who crowded the Senate floor broke into plaudits. 

Seated on the last day of the session of 1890 and unhorsed on 
the first day of the session of 1891, Mr. Stuhr had practically 
been a Senator for a single day ; and he enjoys the distinction of 
having served for the shortest senatorial term in all the annals 
of legislation. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

This Chapter Narrates the Story of the Embarrassments that 
Surrounded the Indictment, the Prosecution and the Impris- 
onment OF THE Hudson County Ballot-Box Stuffers. 




I 



HE exposures made by the Gardner committee created 
the most intense excitement all through the State, and 
a demand went up everywhere for the indictment of 
the men who had been guilty of the fraud. That, 
however, was a thing easier to talk about than to accomplish. 
It was common report that in drawing the grand jury that 
served at the succeeding term of the court, Sheriff Davis had 
not lost sight of the possibility of an effort to indict the election 
oflScers, and that he had interposed a body of inquisitors who 
would stand between them and the courts. It was impossible 
for the Judges to arraign the men until they had been presented 
by the grand jury, and a scanning of the grand jury list re- 
vealed the presence upon it of a ring majority.* 

In the hope of keeping the body in countenance with the 
people and of shielding it from the criticisms its expected inac- 
tion would be certain to provoke, the Sheriff had taken pains 
to throw into it a sprinkling of citizens who enjoyed the 
public confidence. One of these trusted citizens. Dr. Leonard 
J. Gordon, was even named as the foreman. Dr. Gordon was 
recognized as one of the public-spirited men of the town. While 
never seeking office for himself, he was foremost in all public 

*The full list of this memorable grand jury is as follows: Leonard J. 
Gordon, Foreman ; John Ramsay, James Tumilty, Henry Allers, Frederick 
Goddard, John Wade, Michael Smith, Lawrence Fagan, Paul Troust, Walter 
C. Wescott, Otto Lawrence, Charles Marks, Henry Otterson, Garret Felter, 
Owen McGuire, Frederic Gassert, William Letts, Otto Tepper, Benjamin 
Edge, John Cavanagh, Patrick J. Condon, George H. Bowler, John H. 
Schieffelin, Jr. 

(335) 



336 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

movements set on foot for the general welfare. The inadvisable 
things brought him to the front to protest ; he was equally the 
consistent advocate of every progressive idea that was broached. 
Over six feet high, slim and wiry, and a man of tremendous 
energy, he found time for business, politics and society, and was 
a figure in every direction. Dr. Benjamin Edge, a smiling, 
pleasant- faced, black- eyed gentleman of wealth and leisure, was 
another whose name was expected to redeem the whole list. 
But they were only two of twenty-four, and notwithstanding 
their over-shadowing prominence in the body their votes could 
be easily over-balancad, when the question of the crimes of the 
election officers should come up, by the larger number of votes 
the ring had reserved for itself in the body. There was some 
doubt indeed whether, by consenting to serve, the two would 
consent to risk incurring the odium of being part of a public 
body that might refuse to discharge a duty the community ex- 
pected of it. 

When the grand jurors marched into court at the opening of 
the September Term of court, in 1890, Judge Manning M. 
Knapp made the ballot-box crimes the theme of his charge. He 
directed them to make the fullest possible inquiry, not only as 
to the men who had actually perpetrated the frauds, but as to 
those also who had inspired them. It was plain that they had 
been carefully planned, and that the men who served in the 
election booths had but carried out the orders of some higher 
than themselves in the party's councils. 

The struggle between the minority bent on finding indict- 
ments, and the majority that stood stolidly against it, began the 
moment the grand jury withdrew to the privacy of their secret 
chamber. Charles H. Winfield, the lion-maned Prosecutor of 
the county, devoted his nights and days to the preparation of 
the evidence for their consideration. The strained public tem- 
per was impatient of delay, and Drs. Gordon and Edge seized 
every opportunity to urge upon their colleagues the necessity for 
action. The newspapers echoed the demand. Neighbor and 
associate, friend and foe, alike urged that something be done. 
But the grand inquisitors set their faces against it with a grim 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 337 

determination. The bombardment was Jjept up on all sides, till 
it became evident even to their dulled sensibilities that some 
kind of a sop would have to be thrown to the whale of public 
opinion. Lawyers were called in to find a loophole of relief. 
They were asked if they could not devise presentments that 
would break under the test of a judicial strain. One among them 
finally struck a happy idfa, and advised them that indictments 
alleging conspiracy, in indicated technical phrases, would meet 
the emergency. The mere presentment of the bills would still 
public clamor ; the technical weakness of their form would, at 
the same time, make conviction and punishment impossible. 
The majority hesitated even to risk this subterfuge. 

Foreman Gordon suspected that they might be more willing 
to aid him if their vote could be a secret one. The usual mode 
was to vote indictments by the aye and nay responses on a roll- 
call ; and the tally-list was a record that showed the part of 
each man in shaping the result. 

Dr. Gordon decided to try the experiment of changing the 
method. He watched for an opportunity to throw the old 
method aside. A trifling case that came up for consideration 
brought him the opportunity. It had no relation to the elec- 
tion cases; but the grand jurors knew the parties interested in 
it, and some who were ready to vote an indictment did not want 
the indicted men to know that they had voted against them. 
Foreman Gordon suggested that if a secret vote were taken on 
the question of indicting, their attitude upon the matter could 
never be known. His blind colleagues fell into the trap. They 
regarded the expedient as a mere cover for that unimportant case. 
The foreman surprised them afterwards by declaring that it set the 
precedent for the procedure on all the cases presented for action. 
Presently Dr. Edge moved the consideration of the election 
cases. A clamor went up at once for a return to the usual sys- 
tem of viva voce voting. The foreman refused to listen to it ; 
and, confident of their superiority in numbers, the champions of 
the election boards prepared their secret ballots. General John 
Ramsay gathered the bits of paper up in a hat. The ring con- 
tingent became alarmed as " aye " after " aye " was told ofl^ by 

22 



338 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the counters. They were white with rage and fear when the 
completed count showed that the secret ballot had resulted in an 
indictment. The determined fraud- pursuers were satisfied with 
their triumph for the day, and action on other cases was de- 
ferred until the next morning. 

Frequent councils held by the frightened ring leaders in the 
meanwhile, resulted in an attempt at the next meeting to recon- 
sider the action ordering the bill thus incautiously voted. 
Favored by the secret ballot the reconsideration failed and then 
the ring managers determined upon a bold stroke. It was 
nothing less than the indictment of all the suspected men. The 
throng thus put in peril would swoop down on the grand jurors 
with a pressure for reconsideration that could not be resisted. 
The plan was carried out, and the four members of each of 
seventeen election boards were put under indictment. One of 
the sixty-eight had died since the election, and sixty-seven men 
were put in jeopardy by the seventeen bills. Howls of fear 
went up from the sixty-seven throats. The grand jurors were 
besieged and buttonholed and coaxed, cajoled and threatened till 
life was made a nuisance. Then when they had been tortured and 
goaded into complaisance, the motion to reconsider was sprung. 

Foreman Gordon had been watching the side play. He had 
prepared himself for the emergency. When the motion was 
offered, he threw the crowd into confusion by refusing to enter- 
tain it. Such a motion could be made according to Gushing 
only by one who had voted with the prevailing party. The 
action on these cases had been taken by ballot ; there had been 
no roll-call. It was impossible to say who had voted for and 
who against the bills. There was no record to show that the man 
who moved the reconsideration was in parliamentary position to 
ask for it. The motion was declared out of order. A dozen 
men sprang to their feet shouting for an appeal from the decision 
of the chair. The foreman refused to entertain the appeal. 
Ring adherents jumped over their desks, and gathered around 
him in excited throngs. One bully among them invited him 
to step down from his platform so that, as he elegantly expressed 
it, he might " wipe the floor with him." Dr. Edge, Gen. Ram- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 339 

say and the constables went to Gordon's aid and kept the baffled 
throng at bay till quiet had been restored and the attempt to 
reconsider had been abandoned. 

There was yet another critical stage to be passed before the 
bills could be taken into court. They could not be presented to 
the Judges until the foreman had been ordered to sign them. 
The ring adherents prepared themselves to vote " no " on the 
question whether they should be perfected by the foreman's 
signature. Dr. Gordon had anticipated this obstruction, and 
he had fortified himself with the advice of a Supreme Court 
Judge, to the effect that the specific order of the grand jury was 
not necessary to authorize the signature, and he circumvented 
them by signing without waiting for their order. 

Thus baffled at every point, the chagrined men prepared to 
-defeat the delivery of the true bills to the court by combining 
to stay out of the court- room. The form requires the presence 
of a majority of the grand jury before the Judges when bills are 
handed up, and it was impossible for the few anti-ring men in 
the grand jury to make the presentments without the presence 
of the others. When the bills had all been prepared and the 
foreman and his colleagues were ready to go into court. Dr. 
Edge moved that the body proceed to the court- room with the 
bills. A chorus of negative responses greeted the motion. The 
foreman declared that he proposed to go anyhow, and placed the 
big bundle of bills, tied around with red tape, on the long green 
■table around which the grand jury gathered, while he threw his 
overcoat over his shoulders. One of the ring men made a dart 
for the bills with the evident purpose of destroying them, but 
the foreman was too quick for him and seized them before he 
could reach them. Then, making a dash for the door, he 
directed the grand jurors to form in line behind him. Less than 
half a dozen obeyed, and he turned back and with his loftiest 
air commanded the rest to join the procession. When they 
still held back, he directed the clerk to prepare a petition to the 
court asking for bench warrants for their arrest. They yielded 
to the bluff and followed the foreman into the court-room 
and the indictments were finally placed in the Judge's hands. 



340 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 



Dr. Gordon was not satisfied even with the triumph he thus 
achieved, and when he handed the indictments up to the court, 
he accompanied them with an explanation, signed by himself, 
Dr. E'^ge, Gen. Ramsay and John H. Schieffelin, Jr., that the 
opposition their good work had encountered in the grand jury 
room had made it impossible for him and them to do more io 
the interest of justice. 

The accused men were arrested at once, and Prosecutor Win- 
field made prepara- 
tions for their im- 
mediate trial. Each 
indictment charged 
the four men who 
made up an election 
board, and Win- 
field's prophecy that 
he would start 
the whole crew of 
rascals to State 
Prison in files of 
four became famous. 
He bad an enormous 
pile of testimony to 
digest and arrange, 
no end of records to 
examine, clues to 
follow up, and wit- 
nesses to chase out 
from their hiding- 
places. Captain 
John Graham, who had rendered such valuable service to the 
Gardner Investigating Committee, was the only man whom he 
could trust as his assistant in the performance of this difficult 
and onerous task, and the two frequently worked all night in 
the preparation of the cases that were weekly called to trial. 
All through the records he struck evidence that the frauds had 
been carefully planned beforehand by a directing head, and that 




Charl3s H. Winfield. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 34 L 

they bad been perpetrated at most of tbe one hundred and 
sixty-three polling-places in Jersey City. Hints as to who was 
the head and front of the conspiracy were numerous, but the 
most searching inquiry failed to bring any convincing proofs of 
their justice. 

The fraudulent ballots found in the boxes had been printed 
on a thin tissue-paper unlike that which had been used for the 
regular ballots, and were so marked that they could be easily 
detected ; but beyond some testimony that they were taken from 
the Democratic County Committee's rooms by the poll- workers 
on the night before election, no trace of the manner in which 
they had got into general circulation could be secured. The 
marks found upon the fraudulent ballots were in all cases dif- 
ferent from those made by the automatic registering machinery 
of the box in which they were discovered ; the circular 
print made by it became an ellipse, and the needle puncture 
that should have been in the circle was frequently outside of it. 
The marks on all the regular ballots were precisely the same. 
Prosecutor Winfield concluded that the thousands of fraudulent 
ballots, run through a box somewhere secretly, had been 
punched, in bundles, with an awl. Only one of the one hun- 
dred and fifty ballot-boxes in use in the county on that fateful 
election day could have made the imprint found upon the joker 
ballots, and it was noted as something of an incident that the 
machinery of that box refused to work when it was taken into 
service at the polling- place. Not the slightest evidence could 
be produced as to the place where or the person by whom they 
had been prepared for the use of the conspirators, and it is an 
open question even yet how they were got into the boxes at all 
without showing the marks of the boxes. Prosecutor Winfield 
imbibed the impression from what he learned of the circum- 
stances surrounding the crime at the trials that the head of the 
boxes must have been taken off, and these "joker ballots," as 
they were called, thrust in by the handful. 

It came to Mr. Winfield, through Joseph Locke, a constable 
on Jersey City Heights, that a woman living with " Tom " 
Trotter, a characterless election sharp, as a housekeeper, had 



342 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

seen him run the ballots through the mill of a box-head, and he 
had reason to believe, at the time the election board with which 
Trotter was connected was about to be called to trial, that she 
still had that box-head in her possession. He started his con- 
stables out to follow up that clue. They traced the woman to 
the Roosevelt Hospital, in New York. When they inquired 
for her at the door they were told that she could not be seen in 
less than half an hour. They went to a neighboring dining- 
saloon to spend the time they were forced to wait, and as they 
entered, they surprised Sheriff Davis and one or two others who 
were known to be in sympathy with the ring, talking to each 
other in subdued whispers at one of the tables. One of the 
party passed a roll of money to another; and that other hastened 
out of the place. When the Prosecutor's detectives returned to 
the hospital they were allowed to see the woman, but she assured 
them that she knew nothing that could throw any light upon 
the conspiracy. An hour afterwards she was out of the place. 
The Prosecutor's officers returned to his desk with the impres- 
sion that the woman's ignorance about the matter was due some- 
how or other to the presence of Sheriff Davis and his asso- 
ciates in that neighborhood at the time the officers were seeking 
her, and that they had gone there to persuade her to flight before 
the minions of the law could reach her. 

She subsequently returned to " Tom " Trotter's household on 
Pavonia avenue, in Jersey City. Convinced that she knew 
more about the matter than she had eaid and that the fear of 
prosecution for perjury would force her to make divulgences,^ 
Prosecutor Winfield sent a second capias after her the day before 
one of the election boards was to be tried, but somebody had 
given her the cue, and when his officers rexched the house they 
learned that she had fled an hour before. 

When Prosecutor Winfield had prepared the cases for trial^ 
he proceeded to redeeem his promise to start a file of four 
towards Trenton each week till they had all been imprisoned, 
and brought the first accused of the election boards to the bar 
of Judge Lippincott's court. The scene in the court-room as 
the trials progressed was a memorable one. Throngs of the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 343 

unwashed flocked to the benches outside the bar- rail. Troops 
of distinguished citizens who had never seen the inside of a 
court-room before, filled the chairs within the rail. On one 
side of the green table, in front of the jary box, the four 
defendants sat, with their counsel. Some notable lawyers were 
among those who had rushed to court to defend them. Ex- 
Judge Abram Q. Garretson, keen- faced and accounted one of 
the most skillful cross- examiners at the bar, was the only one 
of them under retainer. The dark-visaged Hudspeth, who had 
been Speaker of the Assembly ; the self-important William D. 
Daly, who had served a term or more in the same Chamber ; 
Charles C. Black, whom Governor Abbett had put at the head 
of the State Board of Taxation, and Norman L. Rowe, counsel 
of the ring Board of Freeholders, were by his side as volunteer 
assistants. And amid them all sat the Sheriff, bald-headed and 
under-sized, who had been the recognized Boss of the party at 
the time the crimes were committed, cheering and comforting 
the prisoners, prompting and advising the lawyers. Prosecutor 
Winfield, with tongue to move to laughter or melt to tears 
with his changing moods, a man of playful fancy, rich in quota- 
tion, terrible in invective, and of vehement eloquence, stood 
alone. A glance at his massive frame, at the strong lines of his 
face with its overhanging mane of abundant yellow hair, 
showed that he wag a lion among them. 

And on the bench presiding with firmness and dignity was the 
cherub-faced Job H. Lippincott, with cheeks full and ruddy, and 
big wide-awake blue eyes — a picture of health and conscience 
and of the good nature that prime health and a clear conscience 
always beget, but a man of iron will withal. He had lay asso- 
ciates on the bench — the Celtic- faced Kenny and the self- conscious 
Albert Hoffman ; but, after all, he was the central figure in the 
personnel of the whole assemblage. For upon his treatment of 
the issues to be raised in the hearings depended the results of 
the trials. He could balk the prosecution at every step, if he 
were so inclined, by ruling out the offers of the State and 
admitting the offers of the defense ; and by his charge at the 
close he could sway the jury to convict or acquit, as his 



344 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

humor moved him. The friends of the accused had not lost 
sight of his overshadowing importance in the conduct of the 
cases. They had resorted to all the tricks of the politician to 
bring him to a complaisant view of their offenses. 

Ex- Judge Garretson made the case bristle with technical 
points as the first of the trials went on. His first stand was 
taken on the question of the right of the defendants to challenge 
the candidates for the jury-box. Mr. Winfield had been unwill- 
ing to risk the convictions to the term panel of petty jurors 
selected by Sheriff Davis and had brought the defendants into 
court for trial before special panels of forty-eight men, repre- 
senting the choice citizens of the county and selected under the 
supervision of the court. After the forty-eight are selected in 
proceedings of this kind, it becomes the privilege of each side 
interested in the trial to strike off alternately a name until but 
twenty- four remain. From this twenty- four on trial day, the 
twelve who are to determine the issue are selected. Judge 
Garretson raised the point when he went to the defense of the 
first of the indicted boards that each of the four defendants was 
entitled to the common-law right of challenging three jurors of 
the panel. If that privilege had been allowed, twelve of the 
twenty-four would have disappeared from the special panel on 
peremptory challenges, and when the State had interposed its 
three challenges, there would not have been enough left (o have 
filled the jury-box. Mr. Winfield met Mr. Garretson's argu- 
ment with the novel point that the defendants had exhausted 
their challenge rights in striking out, alternately with the State, 
the twenty-four names from the original list of forty-eight, and 
that they had no right whatever to challenge in court. Even if 
the right to any challenges were allowed, the four defendants 
stood before the court as one, he contended, and the group was 
entitled to but the three challenges to which a defendant was 
entitled in ordinary trials. Judge Lippincott promptly over- 
ruled Mr. Garretson's motion and, sustaining the Prosecutor, 
ordered the trial to go on. 

The case had not progressed far before Mr. Garretson raised 
the objection to the indictments upon which the friends of the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 345 

accused had from the first counted for their acquittal. The 
peculiar character of the crimes had made it necessary to depart 
somewhat from the usual form in drawing the bills. It was a 
recognized crime for a body of men to conspire to do something 
to obstruct the law. These men were accused of having con- 
spired to do something by obstructing the law. In one case 
the obstruction of the law is an end ; in the other it is a means 
to an end ; and Judge Garretson argued that an indictment 
which charged it as an incident would not lie under the form 
which required it to be charged as an end. The point was an 
exceptionally fine one, and for some time Mr. Winfield was 
puzzled to find an answer to it. When he sought Attorney- 
"General Stockton for light, that eminent lawyer and statesman 
was inclined to believe that the point had been well taken 
against him. Assistant Prosecutor Joseph M. Noonan called 
all the subtleties and sophisms of his metaphysical mind into 
play to convince his chief that Mr. Garretson and the Attorney- 
General knew what they were talking about. Winfield refused, 
however, to be convinced, and he searched the books tirelessly 
till he found a case which exactly fitted his own. Marching 
into court triumphantly the next morning with his sheepskins 
■under his arm, he drove a peg into the State's case for Judge 
X<ippincott to hang a favorable decision upon, and the court 
sustained the indictment and for the second time ordered the 
trial to proceed. 

Lawyer Garretson played his last card when he made an argu- 
ment, based on the State's theory that the "joker ballots" had 
been printed and punctured before they had been placed in the 
ballot-boxes. He insisted that the ballot-boxes were so con- 
structed as to make it impossible to pass a bit of paper into them 
without having it marked by the registering machine at the slot. 
After dinner, the day this point was raised, Mr. Winfield strode 
into court with one of the big glass boxes under his arm and 
placed it on the desk in view of the jury. He ran a number of 
ballots through it to convince the jury, by the marks it made 
upon them, that its printing machinery was in perfect working 
order. 




Job H. Lippincott. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 347 

"And now, gentlemen of the jury," he said, with an air of 
triumph, "let me show you how easily one of these 'joker 
ballots ' can be put through this slot without showing a single 
other mark than that which is upon it now." 

He thrust a needle into the slot and held its printing appa- 
ratus motionless while he ran a dozen of the ballots through 
into the box. Each ballot, as it passed through, was numbered 
and registered on the indicator in the lid, but not one of them 
received a new mark. Ex-Judge Garretson practically threw 
up his hands after that demonstration, and before night the first 
batch of ballot-box stuffers had been convicted. 

There was a delay of several months before the arraignment of 
the next board. The board first convicted appealed from Judge 
Lippincott's rulings on the challenge question and on the indict- 
ment question, and, as they were both new. Court and Prosecutor- 
alike agreed that it would be wise to wait for the finding of the 
higher courts on them before going on with the other trials. A. 
few months later the Supreme Court sustained Judge Lippincott 
on every ruling which he had made and affirmed the conviction. 
Prosecutor Winfield now began to marshal the election boards 
into court again, and kept them moving in a steady procession 
as fast as he could convict them. 

Of the sixty-seven indicted, but one escaped conviction, and 
the acquittal of that man, the characterless son of a shoe-maker 
who had something of a " pull " among the Republican primary 
workers in the lower part of Jersey City, was regarded by Court 
and Prosecutor as a shameful miscarriage of justice. The court 
ordered the guilty, almost immediately upon the agreements of 
the juries, to appear in court for punishment, and terms of 
eighteen months in the State Prison became the prevailing sen- 
tence. When they presented themselves at the bar they were in 
every case accompanied by bondsmen secured by Sheriff Davis 
for them, and in every case they met the sentences with notices 
of appeal to higher courts. The points upon which the appeals- 
were based had been already adjudicated against them in the 
appeal of the first-convicted board, and the appeals had the 
appearance of impudent challenges of Judge Lippincott's au- 



348 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

thority — made all the more brazen by the circumstance that 
many of those who thus purchased a few months of freedom 
had practically made no defense at their trials. 

Two or three of the less refractory suspects had, however, 
appeared in court and met the charges with pleas of non vult, 
that were at once practical confessions of their guilt and appeals 
to the court for clemency. Judge Lippincott exacted from these 
an engagement that, abstaining from appeal, they would bow 
submissively to the judgment of the court; and in their cases 
he reduced the penalty from the orthodox eighteen months in the 
State Prison to nine months in the penitentiary. Judge Kenny, 
who owed his seat on the bench to ring influences, made a dead- 
lock with the Presiding Judge in the interest of the convicts. 
He called the arrangement that led the prisoner to forego his 
appeal as the price of a reduced sentence '* a bargain," and 
refused to join with the Presiding Justice in imposing the lighter 
judgment. Albert HoiFman, the third member of the court, 
was in Europe at the time ; and the imposition of sentence had 
to be delayed pending his return to his desk. Elward M. Stan- 
ton, an active ring adherent, made a hasty trip across the ocean 
just after the deadlock had occurred, and returned on the same 
steamer that brought Judge Hoflfman back. The waiting public 
indulged meanwhile in speculations as to Hoffman's likely atti- 
tude in the controversy. To the surprise of everybody, he 
joined Judge Kenny in his opposition to Judge Lippincott, and 
the Presiding Judge found himself humiliated in the house of 
his friends by the influence of the ring he had so fearlessly 
crushed under his heel. 

A startling phase of the prosecutions was that as quickly as 
the accused men were convicted the ring boards in Jersey City 
took them into the public service. They were given places as 
clerks, janitors, inspectors, and when, after countless vicissitudes, 
they were coralled for removal to the cells to which they had 
been condemned, the wife of one who had been janitor of the 
building in which a public board transacted its business, was 
appointed to serve in his stead while he served out his term. 

As everybody expected it would, the Supreme Court affirmed 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 349» 

the convictions and the public believed that justice had at last 
overtaken the crowd, but the brazsn crew marched into Judge 
Lippincott's presence equipped with bondsmen again and served' 
notice of another appeal to the Court of Errors. Here there 
was a long delay before a decision was reached, and it was 
argued from it that the highest court had concluded to set aside the 
convictions ; but when Chief Justice Beasley handed down the 
decision, the community was overjoyed to see that the court had 
upborne Judge Lippincott's rulings and swept away the last 
hope of the doomed crew. 

Some preliminary explanation is necessary to make clear the 
motive and purpose of the next move of the convicted men in 
their desperate fight for liberty. A colored ex- prize- fighter 
named Hallinger, who had turned preacher, had, while the trials 
were in progress, buried a hatchet in the head of the woman 
whom he called his wife, at her home in Jersey City. A hot 
pursuit resulted in his capture and he was lodged in jail on a 
charge of murder. When arraigned in court, he had pleaded 
guilty, and the sentence of death had been pronounced upon 
him. After the gallows had been erected, a legal adventurer^ 
named Charles J. Peshal, who had quartered himself at Taylor's 
Hotel, in Jersey City, visited him in his cell and, assuring him 
that he would not hang, bade him be of good cheer. So little 
was thought of this interference that the preparations for the 
hanging went actively forward. The morning of the dreaded 
day dawned. Hallinger, arrayed in a sombre suit of black, had 
eaten his last meal and said his last prayer and was preparing 
for the final scene, when Peshal dashed into the Sheriff's office 
with a stay. He had made a fljing trip to Trenton, and 
applied to Judge Green, of the United States courts, for a 
habeas corpus, and a review of the proceedings that had eventu- 
ated in Hallinger's sentence. His plea was that the courts could 
not hang a man upon his own plea of guilty, and that when 
such a plea was entered there must be a trial by a jury to de- 
termine the degree of guilt. Judge Green refused to grant the 
writ. 



550 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

" TheD," said Peshal, " I appeal to the Uuited States Supreme 
€ourt." 

The right of appeal was one that could not be denied, and the 
lawyer's notice of appeal carried with it a stay of the execution 
j)ending its determination. So the gallows were taken down, 
Hallinger laid off his suit of black, and, in the joy of prolonged 
life, began to sing hymns. The appeal lagged and lagged. 
When it finally reached a hearing, Peshal did not even take the 
trouble to prosecute it, but let it go by default. The Judges at 
Washington dismissed it as a matter of course, and the blood- 
stained colored exhorter was taken into court and a new day for 
his hanging was fixed. When the last hours approached again, 
Peshal made a second trip to Trenton and a second application 
for a writ of habeas corpus. It was refused, of course. 

" Then," exclaimed Peshal again, " I appeal." 

The execution was stayed again, and Hallinger passed the 
hour that was to have been his last in a game of cards with his 
watcher. The appeal was again dismissed, Hallinger was sen- 
tenced for a third time, another groundless application for habeas 
<iorpus was interposed, another appeal taken, and the execution 
deferred for the third time, and it was yet a mooted question, 
when the ballot- bo,x stuff ers had lost their final appeal to the 
Jersey courts, whether the colored assassin would ever meet the 
doom to which the courts had condemned him. 

When they had played their last card in the State courts and 
lost, the convicted election officers prepared to employ the same 
tactics that had kept Hallinger for more than two years beyond 
the reach of the courts, and they retained Peshal to interpose to 
save them. The moment the failure of their appeal before the 
Oourt of Errors became known, the lawyer stole quietly off" to 
Trenton to find a United States Court Judge. Judge Lippincott 
had, however, been informed of the movement, and to defeat it 
he hastened a detail of trusty officers out into the highways and 
byways to bring the convicted men in. They succeeded admira- 
bly in their mission, and by evening there was a "round-up" 
of all the crew except four in Judge Lippincott's court-room. 
The Judge informed them of the finding of the Court of Errors, 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 351 



and notified them that they had no choice now but to suffer the 
punishment they had contumaciously escaped for nearly two 
years. Coaches were in waiting for them in the jail yard. The 
officers bundled them into these, and, forewarned against allow- 
ing any interference, hurried them off to the prison. Peshal 
had not had good luck in finding a United States Court Judge, 
and the court had forestalled his interference. 

During the two years covered by the incidents attending the 
trials, Davis's term as Sheriff had expired, and, in the exercise 
of his sovereignty over the party, he had made his deputy, John 
J. McPhillips, his successor. Anticipating the surrender of his 
shrievalty, he had, as much as a year before, induced a Board 
of Freeholders that acknowledged him as a master to appoint 
himself Keeper of the County Jail. He was in care of the jail 
at the time the convictions were affirmed, anxiously awaiting 
Peshal's return from his secret mission. He accompanied the 
baffled crew to the railroad depot, to offer them condolences 
and give them assurances that their families should not suffer 
while they were doing the State's service. 

The four whom the court's officers had been unable to find 
-were still at large when the train rolled out from under the 
vaulted iron shed at Jersey City for Trenton. By night it was 
rumored that Peshal had served a notice on Sheriff McPhillips 
and the imprisonment of the missing four had been delayed by 
a stay from a United States Court Justice. Application for a 
habeas corpus could not have been possible unless the men had 
been restrained of their liberty, and, concluding that the four must 
have been secretly lodged in the jail to give color to Peshal's 
application in their behalf. Judge Lippincott went from his home 
to make inquiry. It was his purpose to hasten them away at once, 
before Peshal could have time to perfect his papers. The books 
showed no record of their presence there, and the clerk at the 
desk assured him that they were not in custody. As the night 
wore on, however, it became more and more certain that Davis 
had actually taken them into the jail to hide them till Peshal 
oould get back with his stay. They were not being detained in 
the wards as prisoners, but were being entertained as the jailer's 
guests in his private apartments. 



352 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Judge Lippincott went to his court-room in the morning be- 
fore Peshal reached Jersey City, and he set all the machinery of 
his court in motion to force Davis to produce the hidden con- 
victs. The jailer dodged the court's orders, for delay, till the 
Judge took the matter into his own hands. The constables were 
directed to take them into custody at once and hurry them away 
to State Prison. Just as they were about to leave the court- 
room, Peshal dashed in. He had a stay and served it. The 
court looked at the writ, saw that it had been based on a false 
affidavit that the men had been restrained of their liberty in the 
jail, and directed the constables to pay no heed to it. Peshal 
threatened contempt, and all kinds of terrors ; but the court wa& 
unmoved, and to prison the hidden four were whirled. 

The United States Grand Jury indicted Davis for his part in 
that afiair, but United States District Attorney Henry S. White 
delayed calling him to trial for months. Meanwhile Sheriff 
McPhillips, the essential witness for the State, died suddenly 
and the prosecution became impossible. 

While the appeals taken to the Court of Errors were pending^ 
the Legislature passed an act authorizing the Court of Pardona 
to release prisoners on tickets of leave on assurances of good 
behavior. Allan McDermott made application for their release 
under this law ; and the Court of Pardons, on the Christmas 
Eve following, let them all free, after a service of less than five 
months. There might have been little public criticism of this 
display of clemency if the court had made discrimination that 
the characters of the men and the nature of the proofs against 
them might have justified. Some of the active conspirators were 
in the released crew ; but many of the men had been guilty 
only of technical offenses. Their guilt lay in having ignor- 
antly, or carelessly, signed false returns prepared by their asso- 
ciates, and which they may have believed to have been correct ; 
and as to those the exercise of a wise clemency might have been 
excused by the public. But the Pardon Board drew no lines 
whatever, and by the vote of all the members excepting Chan- 
cellor McGill, let the whole crowd, the conscious participants 
with those whose only sin had been their carelessness or their 
credulity, loose to prey upon the public again. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



353 



The exciting and sensational pursuit of the ballot- bos crew 
served as an object lesson that the advocates of a better ballot 
system improved. In his Inaugural insistment for a Ballot 
Reform law, Governor Abbett had but voiced a sentimeBt that 
was universal throughout the country, and the Governors of 
many other States had spoken in the same vein. Daniel M. Kanep^ 
a Democratic member from Middlesex with some Labor lean- 
ings, had in 1889 brought the Australian ballot system t{> at- 
tention, and when the 
Legislature of 1890 set- 
tled down to the prob- 
lem seriously, its con- 
templation of the subject 
was along the line of 
that system. Senator 
Werts, of Morris, drew 
the bill — it is known as 
the Werts Ballot Re- 
form law — and with the 
light- haired Voorhees, 
of Union, perfected it. 
It incorporated the idea 
of the official ballot, is- 
sued to the election offi- 
cers by the county or 
city officers, and of the 
closets at the booths in 
which voters are re- 
quired to seclude them- 
selves in the preparation of their ballots. It permitted only the 
parties which had polled a certain percentage of the total vote ta 
file nominations made in convention, forced the less-numerous 
parties to the expedient of putting their candidates forward by 
petition, and provided for the selection of poll attendants by the 
two predominant parties. By surrounding the procurement of 
official ballots with obstructions, and depriving them of poll work- 
ers to handle the tickets after they had been secured, it discouraged 

23 




Foster M. Voorhees. 



354 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

the canvass of the smaller parties, and made independent party 
movements almost impossible. The Republicans hoped through 
it to crowd the Prohibitionists out of the polls ; and the Demo- 
crats employed it with considerable effect to prevent threatened 
organized revolts against the ascendancy of the masters of the 
party. 

The Prohibitionists felt especially aggrieved by the difficulties 
it threw about their organized work for votes. The venerable 
Counselor Stephen B. Ransom, of Jersey City, who had been 
the Prohibition candidate for Governor, in 1880, purposely 
violated its provisions, in order to test its constitutionality, and 
submitted to a judgment involving a fine which he had to pay 
when the courts sustained the act as constitutional and effective. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

<jrOVERNOR AbBETT BuILDS HiMSELF INTO AN AuTOCRAT AND HeLPS A 

Greedy Crew of Corruptionists to Overrun the vState. 




I. ABBETT had gone to the Governorship in 1890 
with a specific object in view and a carefully prear- 
ranged method of reaching it. The object was the 
seat in the United States Senate which the accidental 
Blodgett was to vacate in 1893. The method was to entrench 
himself so securely that no one would dare to confront him. If 
he had paraded his very democratic democracy in the campaign 
of 1883 by boasting that there could be " no admission by card 
business in his " after he reached the Governorship, he now se- 
oluded himself far away from the public reach ; and one had to 
pass through half a dozen thicknesses of ante- chamber and to brave 
the scrutiny of half a dozen lackeys to secure an audience with 
him. His temper lost its magnetism. His manner was im- 
perious ; his voice became irritable, harsh and rasping. He was 
overbearing and impatient of advice. He came to be known as 
the Czar, and the government he established over the people 
was so unyielding and searching that it came to be recognized 
as an autocracy. 

His advent had been heralded by a sudden increase of the 
gubernatorial salary from $5,000 to $10,000 a year, which the 
Legislature voted to him. The increase could not be made after 
he had entered upon his administration. He took office the second 
week in January. The Legislature had been in session, with 
Governor Green at the helm, for a week before his inauguration. 
That week was improved for the enactment of a law making 
the increase. Senator Werts introduced the bill, and it passed 
the Republican Senate with even less friction than in the Demo- 
cratic House. In the House, one of the Democratic members. 
Colonel Edward H. Snyder, of Orange, voted against it. Erwin 

(355) 



356 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

and Potts of Hudson, Ulrich of Union and Pollock of Essex 
left their fellow-Republicans to vote for it. Governor Green 
signed it the moment it reached him, and Mr. Abbett had sa 
been enabled to enter upon the duties of his office as one of the 
very few $10,000 a year Governors in the Union. 

The moment he took the reins in his hands he began building 
up the strong personal government that he probably had in hi& 
eye when he consented to serve in the office for a second term. 
He took the portly and brainy Allan L. McDermott into hi& 
counsel as his chief adviser. Though a young man, McDer- 
mott's mental powers and his strong personality had already 
made him a positive force in State politics. He had studied law 
in Governor Abbett's office and advanced himself step by step 
till he had commanded a position for himself among the Demo- 
cratic leaders of the State. He was a brilliant strategist, a 
wonder as an organizer, a dashing cavalryman in politics, but 
cool, daring and intrepid in the battle. He was a man after 
Mr. Abbett's own pattern, and no one felt surprised when it was 
announced that he had received the handsomely remunerative 
clerkship of the Court of Chancery at the Governor's hands aa 
the reward of his loyalty. 

The control of Democratic affiiirs throughout the State resided 
largely with a little coterie of men who had made themselves 
leaders in their several localities. The veteran of veterans, 
Miles Ross, had, as the result of three congressional canvasses 
in the Third district, come to be recognized as a power in Mid- 
dlesex, Monmouth and Somerset counties. The subjection in 
which Dennis McLaughlin and Robert Davis held the party in 
Hudson has already been described. The nervous and twitchy 
James N. Pidcock had an easily-distinguishable following in 
Hunterdon, Sussex and Warren. Essex owned to two leaders. 
Krueger, the Assemblyman who had given Mr. McPherson so 
much concern in the senatorial caavass of 1877, had built a 
great brewery and amassed an enormous fortune. Hundreds 
of beer sellers whom he had started in business were under 
obligations to him for their licenses, for their saloons, for their 
beer even, and their grateful adhesion to him strengthened his 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 357 

hands for political eifort. A very much sleeker and brighter 
and keener manipulator stepped out from his shadow, however, 
as a factor, during Governor Abbett's first administration, till 
he had grown to be known in high State councils. The portly 
and dignified and rosy- cheeked James Smith, Jr., beamed to 
the right of him and beamed to the left of him, and dispensed 
his bounties from a deep purse with an admirable discrimination, 
and responded, handsomely, besides, to every call for money re- 
quired to conduct the State campaigns. Governor Abbett's 
quick eye saw the opportunities for usefulness there were in him. 
He made him one of his personal lieutenants, and he quickly 
rose into a star of the first magnitude, BeDJamin F. Lee, who 
had all this time held on to the Supreme Court Clerkship to 
which Governor Parker had appointed him, had not lost his 
power as a moulder of destinies in South Jersey, and William 
J. Thompson had dared even to challenge General Sewell's 
supremacy in Camden. 

Thompson had been a barkeeper at the start ; but he had 
been prudent, and with his gavings he had purchased a summer 
resort for Philadelphians at Gloucester City. It became popu- 
lar with a class, and he followed it up by opening a race- track 
upon the grounds. This race-course had been a mint to him, 
and he had amassed a fortune counted by the hundreds of thou- 
sands. He impressed his touts and camp-followers into his 
political service, and through them exerted enough icfluence to 
claim recognition as a South Jersey factor. 

Governor Abbett's plan of campaign for the Senatorship 
through the Governorship contemplated the division of the 
State into little principalities, as one might say, and the estab- 
lishment of these powerful local leaders as his lieutenants. The 
functions of government were to be gathered by legislation, as 
completely as conditions would permit, into his hands, and the 
enormous patronage thus placed at his disposal was to be filtered 
to the several localities through the local bosses. These lieu- 
tenants, in turn, had their thoroughly-disciplined army of sub- 
ordinates, working, from high to low, with the precision of a 
military organization. With the aid of Colonel Edward Liv- 



358 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



ingston Price, a distinguished Newark lawyer, who by his skil} 
in organization had commanded the recognition of the Essex 
Democracy, Mr. Smith turned the Democratic household in 
that county into a militia organization. There was, first, the 
Generalissimo, Smith. From the County Committee-men he 
selected a leader in each of the Assembly districts. This leader, 
in his turn, named the chief worker in each ward or township j 
the chief worker in ward or township wa? aided, in his turn, by 

a lieutenant in each 
polling p recinct. 
Whenever an office 
was to be filled in 
any of the town- 
ships, for instance, 
it was the business 
of the leader in the 
precinct to which 
the office fell to find 
out who could be of 
most service in that 
particular locality 
to the machine ; he 
would report the 
name to the town- 
ship leader ; the 
township leader 
would send it up to 
the district leader; 
the district leader 
would pass it along 
to the potential chairman of the committee ; the chairman would 
whisper it into the ear of Generalissimo Smith ; the Generalis- 
simo would present it to Governor Abbett with his compliments; 
and the Governor would acknowledge its receipt by writing it on 
a parchment commissioning the man whom it represented to fill 
the vacant place. It was not possible to organize the party in 
some of the other localities into military camps of such rigid 




Colonel Edward L. Price. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 359 

discipline, but the model was one which all of the lieutecaats 
patterned as closely as circumstances would allow ; and Gover- 
nor Abbett looked forward to the time when he was to be just 
as fully Commander-in-Chief of the Democratic party as he was 
of the State militia. 

Legislation was needed, however, for the centralization of the 
powers which would enable him to hold the machine loyally to 
him. The functions of government were at the time widely 
distributed. They were exercised by a hundred different hands. 
The Governors of the past had been weak or strong according 
as the Legislatures were with them or against them. Governor 
Green had been forced to deal with Republican Legislatures, 
and they bad stripped him of one prerogative after another till 
he had become a mere figurehead in State affairs. The Legis- 
lature of 1890, which went into Trenton with Governor Abbett, 
was divided politically. The Assembly might have been ready 
to give him whatever of legislation his plan of reign contem- 
plated. The Republican Senate would be sure to defeat it, and 
nothing was attempted. 

But the Legislatures that met in Trenton in January, 1891, 
and January, 1892, were Democratic in both branches, and the 
submissive agents of the Governor. They assembled only to do 
the things he desired to have done ; and so thoroughly eiFaced 
themselves as parts of the law-making machinery of the State 
that when they adjourned sine die they left half or more of the 
bills they had passed in Governor Abbett's hands for such dis- 
position as he saw fit to make of them. Ordinarily the passage 
of a bill by the Houses was followed by its prompt presentation 
to the Governor. If he was not disposed to favor it, its passage 
over his veto was still possible. But in the Legislatures of 1891 
and 1892 the bulk of the passed bills were held in the Passed Bills 
Committee's hands till the end of the session, and then handed 
to the Governor. If he were opposed to any, there was no 
Legislature at hand to re-enact it, and his refusal to sign it was 
sufficient to defeat it forever. The showy Robert Adrain, of 
Middlesex, presided over the Senate, and blonde James J. Ber- 
gen, of Somerset, was Speaker of the Assembly at both sessions. 



.?^ *^ 



'^- 



560 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

The Governor used the first of these Legislatures to seize all 
State functions for his use and ecjoyment. The State Boards 
were all to be made up of men of his appointment, and every- 
thing they were to be allowed to do was to be done only " with 
the Governor's approval." The tenures of some of these 
appointees were indeed to be only at the " pleasure of the Gov- 
ernor." New departments were created, not more to make 
places for favorites than to overawe and terrorize business and 
community influences that might be tempted into active oppo- 
sition to him. The office of Bankicg and Insurance Commis- 
^ sioner was created, with 

^-'^"^'^ '% searching functions. A 

g \ State Tax Board was in- 

vested with such ransack- 
ing powers that no tax- 
payer in the State could 
escape its scrutiny. The 
State Board of Assessors, 
which made up the tax 
bills for the railroads, was 
put under the heel of the 
Chief Magistrate. The 
control of the State 
'A>„ Lunatic Asylums was 

taken out of the hands of 

James J. Bergeu. ^i • i j • 

those in charge and given 
to a new board of his appointment. The State Riparian Board 
were forbidden to make a lease of land without his express 
approval. The management of the State Prison, of the Nor- 
mal School, of the Boys' Reform School, at Jamesburg ; of the 
Girls' Industrial School, at Trenton ; of the Soldiers' Home, 
the deaf and dumb retreats — of everything — was in his keep- 
ing. He was even authorized to draw money from the State 
treasury for any public purpose that commended itself to his 
judgment. 

The battery, with stones and missiles, of the big Clark thread 
factories in East Newark, by an enormous mob of locked- out 




MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 361 

strikers, next furnished him with a convenient pretext for 
making himself the master of even the local police forces every- 
where. There was no agency of repression in times of tumult 
except the militia, and to set the soldiery upon the citizens was 
only to inflame them to greater excesses. They could be much 
more smoothly and ea&ily over- awed by the police, to the sight 
of whose blue coats and brass buttons as an emblem of author- 
ity the people had become accustomed. It was wise, therefore, 
«o the more than plausible argument ran, that the Chief Magis- 
trate should have the police of the cities and towns subject to 
his immediate orders in times of tumult. The bill creating a 
State Chief of Police, who upon the order of the Governor 
•could draft a posse from the police forces anywhere in the State, 
was the outcome of it. It encountered the opposition in the 
Assembly of Assemblyman John R. Hardin, John Neider of 
Essex, Mitchell B. Perkins and A. Harry White of Burling- 
ton, Wm. B. Campbell of Monmouth, and D. W. Haggerty of 
Warren, all Democrats, but was passed in spite of them. In 
the Senate it was championed by Senator Edward F. McDonald, 
of Hudson. Senator George T. Cranmer, of Ocean, read a 
paper numerously signed by the Clark Thread Works' employes 
against it, but it passed there too by Democratic votes, and the 
Governor made it law by signing it. 

The public prints insisted, however, upon seeking sinister 
motives for the Governor's promotion of the act. Dennis Mc- 
Laughlin was at the time running his race- track at Guttenberg 
under the protection of grand juries drawn by Davis, to the 
great scandal of Hudson county. He had put himself under 
engagement to deliver the Assembly vote of the county to the 
Governor for the Senatorship when the time came. The menace 
of a descent upon his race-course by the State Police was ex- 
pected to keep him to his engagement. The selection of Mc- 
Laughlin's friend, ex-Assemblyman Feeney, to serve as the 
Chief of the service was looked upon as an olive branch of 
peace as long as McLaughlin was properly submissive. The 
Governor left nothing to Feeney 's discretion, however. The act 



362 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

under which he held subjected him to removal whenever the 
Governor was displeased with him. 

His next move was to force the liquor men into an attitude 
of friendly compliance. This he proposed to do with an act 
establishing a State License Board, with supervisory control 
over all the local Excise Boards. But old Assemblyman Nash,, 
of Camden, made such an outcry against this invasion of liquor 
rights, in caucus and out of it, that the scheme was abandonee}. 

It was replaced with another establishing County Excise 
Boards of the Governor's selection wherever and whenever in 
his judgment they were required. These boards were endowed 
with enormous prerogatives. They could grant licenses that 
had been refused by the local boards and revoke those which the 
local boards had granted. They could force saloons upon locali- 
ties that had set their faces against them, and close them in com- 
munities that wanted them. Cumberland county, which was 
built on the temperance idea, learned with dismay that one of 
these boards was to be named to open saloons on her soil, and 
gave riotous expression to her alarm. Her people threatened ta 
boycott and ostracise any man who should serve on the commis- 
sion, and the Governor found it difficult to find anyone willing 
to act there. When at last a Vineland citizen consented to 
accept, his wife and children were so " cat," ignored and abused 
by the people that they prayed him to resign, and when another 
was found dead in his office soon after his appointment, it was- 
hailed all over the county as an expression of Divine indigna- 
tion at the invasion of the ungodly. 

Another act turned all the District Court Judges out of office 
to pave the way for men of the Governor's appointment ; another 
gave Jersey City and Newark three Police Justices each, to do- 
business to which the two in commission in each city devoted 
less than two hours a day. Another degraded the Republican 
Police and the Republican Fire Chiefs in Jersey City and 
Newark, protected from removal by a tenure of office act, and 
set up supernumerary Police and Fire Superintendents to be 
chosen by the Democratic Mayors of the two cities over them.. 
He made his old law student, ex-Speaker William C. Heppen- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 36:5 



heimer, Comptroller of the State Treasury ; named George R. 
Gray, of Newark, to be State Treasurer as a concession to Jame& 
Smith, Jr. ; put his son Leon at the Private Secretary's desk in 
his department ; procured for his son William F. an appoint- 
ment as a special counsel to the State Tax Board, and seated a 
brother of his own at one of the bookkeeping desks in the 
Comptroller's office. 

The Legislature of 1891, whose overwhelming Democratic 
majority made these seizures of power possible, did not close its- 
session without perfecting legislation looking to the perpetuation 
of the party's supremacy. It was vested by the Constitution 
with the prerogative of re- apportioning the Assemblymen among^ 
the counties and, of course, of fixing the lines of the new 
Assembly districts. It went to the discharge of this function 
with the avowed purpose of arranging a gerrymander that would 
assure to the Democrats at least forty of the sixty Assembly 
seats. It was so transparently unfair and partisan that in the 
gubernatorial campaign of 1892 the most eiFective of the Re- 
publican campaign documents was a richly- colored map showing 
the divisions. The Assembly campaign of 1891 was made 
under it and it gave in the Assembly of 1892 forty-two seats to 
113,084 Democratic voters, and only eighteen seats to the 98,534 
Republican voters. Effort was hopeless among the Republicans 
with such a handicap, and they appealed to the courts for 
redress. The litigation resulted in a declaration by the Supreme 
Court that this act was monstrously unfair and disfranchising, 
and in a decision that the system of electing Assemblymen by 
districts was in violation of the Constitution, which required the 
election of Assembly delegations in bulk, from each county, by 
the entire voters of the county. 

The Legislature of 1891 was the product of a provisional 
gerrymander that had been established by the Legislature of 
1890. The Legislature of 1892, which took up the work of 
strengthening the autocracy, was the product of this more strin- 
gent gerrymander for which the decennial apportionment of 
Aesemblymen had afforded the pretext. The two Houses of 
1891 had, as has been seen, devoted themselves mainly to the 



564 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

transfer of State prerogatives to the Governor's hands. The 
Legislature of 1892 devoted itself to the task of putting the 
local governments as much under his control. The management 
•of affairs in Hudson and Essex counties had fallen into the 
hands of his followers, and an act extending the terms of the 
governing Boards of Freeholders was passed to keep them there. 
The smaller counties were reached by an act vacating the seats 
in the Boards and providing for the election of others by the 
voters of the gerrymandered districts. The gerrymander had 
produced a subservient Legislature ; it was expected, by the same 
token, to produce subservient Boards of Freeholders. The new 
law did not work as it was planned to work, however, at the 
local elections that were held before the Legislature adjourned, 
and Senator Hinchliffe, of Passaic, introduced an act turning 
the new men all out again. 

Finally the cities were attacked. Jersey City had been so com- 
pletely mastered by the charter making Mayor Cleveland the 
sole patronage- distributing agent, that plans were laid to apply 
the principle to a re-organization of Newark's local government. 
The Common Council was the source of all municipal power 
there. The management of the city finances was in the care of 
one of the Council committees ; of the Police Department in the 
care of another. A Fire Committee managed the Fire Depart- 
ment, and a Stieet Committee had charge of street openings and 
improvements. Joseph E. Haynes, the Mayor of the city, was 
an ancient pedagogue of one of the public schools, whom the 
leaders had put into politics ; and his vanity was so swollen by 
the attentions they paid to him that he was like putty in their 
hands ; and they realized that they could safely transfer all the 
city patronage to him. They controlled him ; and through him 
they could man the public places with their own retinue of fol- 
lowers. The Common Council was an elected body, however, 
and the people were so wedded to their system of representative 
government that it was not deemed safe to attempt to dispossess 
it entirely. The fertile brain of Colonel Price evolved the 
scheme that left the Council standing, but reduced it to a shell. 
"The people could go on electing Councilmen as of yore ; but 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 365> 



after they had been elected they had nothing to do. All of the 
important eouncilmanic functions were taken from them and con- 
ferred upon a new department, described as the Street and Water 
Board, to consist of five men, whom the Mayor was authorized 
to appoint. The only prerogatives left to the denuded repre- 
sentative Council were those of acting as disbursing agent for 
the new commissioners and of bestowing the saloon licenses. 
The people did not realize, at the start, how completely the 
introduction of this new department revolutionized the system 
of local government ; but by the time Haynes' term expired in 
the fall, they saw the purpose of the move and had studied its 
effect, and they rose in rebellion. It was part of the scheme ta 
keep Haynes in oflSce for another term ; but public feeling ran 
so high as the time for the election drew near that the leaders 
hesitated to put him forward for reelection. The benignant- 
faced James Smith, Jr., was urged to step into the breach as a 
candidate, but he declined ; and Krueger, the corpulent brewer 
who was his associate in leadership, insisted upon the chance 
being taken with Haynes again. 

The Republicans cast about for their strongest man to con- 
front him with. Herman Lehlbach was hailed on all sides as 
the man for the emergency. A German surveyor who had 
twice swept the city as a candidate for Congress, he was looked 
upon as the most available man for the nomination. Newark 
has never seen a day of such local excitement as that on which 
the people expressed their preferences between these two can- 
didates. Newark is a city of strong local pride, and residents 
threw business to the winds to take part in the fray. Men who 
never concerned themselves in municipal contests, flocked to the 
polls in battalions to let loose their indignation in their ballots. 
But the naturalization mills had been active for weeks before 
the eventful day arrived, and on their way to the polls the 
aroused citizens saw the streets swarming with a new population 
of voters that chattered and clattered in a picturesque foreign 
jargon. Gaily-decked Italians abounded on all sides. A motley 
throng that had never ventured out of the River street barracks 
invaded the villa- lined thoroughfares that only the " quality '' 



366 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

was wont to tread. The day had the aspect of an Italian gala 
<iay. Money was poured out like water ; and every train, too, 
brought companies of rough-looking customers from the neighbor- 
ing towns to take part in the struggle. In spite of it all the con- 
test was a close one. Vast multitudes of excited men swarmed 
in the glare of the electric lights around the bulletin boards of 
the newspaper offices at night, with varying emotions of hope 
and fear, hour after hour, watching the figures that indicated the 
progress of the count of the vote. A pall-like silence fell upon 
them when a shrieking whistle rent the midnight air. 

*' That's Krueger's crow," was the universal comment ; " it's 
the whistle of his brewery signaling the election of Haynes." 

And the completed count showed that the tidings thus whistled 
to the anxious citizens were not false ones. Haynes scored a re- 
€lection, by a narrow majority, to be sure, but a sufficiently pro- 
nounced one to confirm him in the possession of his office, and 
his backers in the enjoyment of the local power they had strug- 
gled so desperately to keep in his hands. 

Newark, however, was not the only municipality for which 
the State House autocrats reached out through the medium of 
the Legislature of 1892. The session closed with an exciting 
struggle for time for the passage of an act placing the govern- 
ments of Paterson, Trenton and Camden under their control. 
The constitutional demand for general laws regulating the in- 
ternal affairs of towns and cities made it necessary to legislate 
for the three cities in one bill. They could be reached only by 
an act aimed at second-class cities. The problem could have 
been solved easily enough by making the Mayor in each the 
center of local power ; but the misfortune of the situation was 
that Camden's Mayor was a Republican. He would be sure to 
dispense the power that might be conferred upon him in a man- 
ner not to the liking of the State House managers ; and legisla- 
tion transferring all the local functions it was desired to reach 
to the Mayors of second-class cities, was out of the question. 

The solution of the knotty problem in municipal manipula- 
tion with which the presence of that uncomplaisant official con- 
fronted the State House magnates, cost them many hours of 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 367 

anxious consultation. They finally evolved the most fantastic 
system of local government that the mind of man ever con- 
ceived. A Police Board, to consist of members named by the 
'Governor, was to be made the axis in the municipal machinery 
of the three cities. When the act was thrown into the House 
for passage, the session was far advanced and the day fixed for 
final adjournment was at hand. It provoked a notable debate. 
Assemblyman Barton B. Hutchinson, of Mercer, a young law- 
yer who acted as leader of the minority, fought it tooth and 
nail at every stage of its passage. Schoolmaster Eugene C. Cole, 
who represented Cape May in the Chamber, assailed it with 
bitter satire. Assemblyman Herbert C. Potts, of Hudson, a 
very little man with a very big voice — they used to say that when 
Potts was called to the Speaker's chair temporarily it was neces- 
sary to remove the ice pitcher so that he could be seen, but when 
he aired his voice at the Reading Clerk's desk he was unani- 
mously voted the most efficient reader that had ever officiated 
there — fulminated against it. Young John R,. Hardin, of 
Essex, and Thomas Flynn, the bright- witted Passaic Assembly- 
man, espoused it, and the majority was Democratic — it went 
through. 

It was not many minutes making the transit to the Senate 
Chamber for concurrence. The last day of the session had 
arrived, and the hour fixed for final adjournment was at hand. 
The time was reached, in fact, while the Senate was still dis- 
cussing the measure. The Assembly waited upon it till the 
patience of the members gave out, and Speaker Bergen announced 
that the Legislature had expired by limitation. The freed 
Assemblymen marched in solemn procession over the hall to the 
Senate Chamber, in pursuance of the custom, to be formally 
dismissed with the Senators to their homes. They found the 
doors locked against them. Sergeant-at-Arms Nathan had made 
up his mind that the final exercises should not take place till the 
pending bill had gone through. The impatient Assemblymen 
rattled the knobs and tapped and knocked for admission, and 
flattened their noses against the frosted glass of the big middle 
doors. But the Senate's Janissary was proof against all their 



368 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

clamors, and the bolt lay in the slot while the Senate proceeded 
with its work. The roll was finally called. The act was^ 
passed. 

Then Nathan, looking like a Spanish nobleman, stepped to 
the middle of the aisle with the swollen air of one conscious of 
a duty well performed, and bowed to the chair. 

" Mistah President," he exclaimed in the rich bass tone that 
had made the " Heart Bowed Down " famous in the annals of 
song, " the Speaker and the House of Assembly ! " 

Before the bolt had been fairly withdrawn, the great folding^ 
doors burst open, and in Speaker Bergen and his colleagues 
bundled, falling over one another in their eager rush for place. 

President Adrain was never so smiling or gracious as he 
received them and declared the session at an end. 

The plan of government, local and State, contemplated by this- 
legislation, spread the Hudson county odor all over the Com- 
monwealth. It was of the very essence of the scheme that the 
entire local machinery everywhere should be submissive and re- 
sponsive to the demands of the central power. Self-respecting 
men of force and character would not lend themselves to the 
servitude which the holding of an office, however high, carried 
with it. Only hirelings who could be bought with place were in 
requisition, and there was a noticeable decline, as the shadow of 
the autocracy spread over the State, in the public morale. The 
more depraved elements came to the surface all over. Shining 
State positions were filled with weak satellites of the bosses, and 
the control of the cities fell into the hands of vicious and auda- 
cious gangs of plunderers. Through them the Governor's- 
personal power was exerted everywhere. No interest was toa 
inconsiderable nor any man too inconspicuous to be made to feel 
the weight of his displeasure. The State was under the heels of 
an autocrat. 



CHAPTER XXX. 



Which Treats of the National Guaed and Shows that the Ee- 

oeganization effected in 1892 could not have 

,been a Political Move. 




ARTISANS, of one side or the other, insisted that not 
evea the State militia had been allowed to escape ser- 
vice as part of the Governor's political machine. Gen- 
eral Dudley S. Steele was Commander of the First 
Brigade of the National Guard, comprising the regimental and 
battalion formations in the upper section of the State, and Gen- 
eral Sewell was at the head of the Second Brigade, embracing 
the regiments at the Philadelphia end of the State. While one 
of the most soldierly of soldiers, General Steele was one of the 
most manly of men, with the sauviter in modo and the fortiter 
in re so nicely adjusted in his make-up that one dared not im- 
pose on his good nature on the one hand, nor felt it a servitude 
to obey on the other. He had found his command in the most 
satisfactory order when he took hold, and had striven tirelessly 
to maintain its military standard. In this he was as successful 
as the then constituted organization of his brigade would per- 
mit. In the midst of his plans for the future, he was stricken 
with a fatal illness. His constitution had not been robust for 
some time prior to his sickness. A cold contracted while taking 
a back-platform ride, in the early spring of 1892, on one of the 
new trolley cars that had just been put into service between 
Newark and East Orange, gave his illness an alarming turn. 
After weeks of patient suffering, relieved by such delicate 
ministrations as only a wife can bestow upon her worshipped 
husband, he joined the silent majority on March 12th, and was 
borne by his comrades-in-arms from his handsome home in East 
Orange to his grave. 

24 (369) 



370 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

General Steele's death devolved the selection of a new Briga- 
dier-General upon the field officers connected with his late com- 
mand. Colonel L. R. Barnard, of the Fifth Regiment (New- 
ark), laid claims to the succession by right of his seniority in 
the service. The soldierly qualities and the personal popularity 
of Colonel Edward A. Campbell, of the First Regiment (also 
Newark), marked him out, too, as an available man. Colonel 
Peter Farmer Wanser, of the Fourth Regiment (Jersey City), 
had risen into State prominence by reason of his election, over so 
conspicuous a citizen as Allan L. McDermott, to the Mayoralty 
of Jersey City, and a random guess was made by his friends that 
he would be the choice of the Board of Officers ; but he had no 
idea at the time of seeking the position, and the mention of his 
name in connection with it was wholly without his procurement. 

Jersey City had been, theretofore, an entrenched Democratic 
stronghold. Its capture under his candidacy by the Republicans 
gave Colonel Wanser a State- wide prominence. He became the 
hero of the hour in his party. He was cheered at its local and 
State conventions. He was mentioned for Governor, for Mem- 
ber of Congress, for everything within the public gift anywhere, 
and, naturally enough, his name was on everybody's lips when 
General Steele's death made a vacancy in the National Guard 
into which he might step. 

Major-General Joseph W. Plume was then at the head of the 
State Militia. He is a born soldier. The military instinct is 
reflected in every line of his face, and in every movement of his 
stalwart frame. He comes of a family whose history is linked 
with the naval and Revolutionary history of the country. Dr. 
William Turk, his maternal grandfather, was of the United 
States Navy, and his grandmother, daughter of Captain John 
W. Livingston, who won his spurs in the War of the Revolu- 
tion and who in his turn was a descendant of William Living- 
ston, Governor of New Jersey during the whole Revolutionary 
epoch. An ancestor on his father's side was of the Hendrick 
Hudson party that in 1607 explored the upper Hudson river, 
and afterwards helped to organize the " Colony of Van Reus- 




Joseph W Plume. 



372 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

saelaers Wyck/' the nucleus around which the city of Albany 
has grown. 

In 1857 the General attached himself to the City Battalion 
of Newark, and served as a private, till at the outbreak of the 
Rebellion, he was commissioned Adjutant of the Second New 
Jereey Volunteers. Nine months later he became an Aid-de- 
Camp on the staff of Brigadier-General William H. French, of 
Sumner's Division ; and, three months further on. Acting 
Aclj atant General of the same Brigade ; and three months later 
Acting Adjutant-General of the Third Division of the Second 
Corps. He resigned in December to become Assistant Adjutant- 
General with the rank of Major; but when his commission 
ranking him only as a Captain reached him, he declined to accept 
it and retired from the service. Not, however, till he had been 
in a number of important engagements. 

In November, 1863, he was made Major and Brigade Inspec- 
tor of the National Guard of New Jersey. United States 
Senator William Wright recommended his appointment a year 
later as a First Lieutenant in the Regular Army, but he did not 
wish the honor. When the Thirty-seventh Regiment (New 
Jersey) Volunteers was recruited he was elected its Colonel, but 
declined to serve because the regiment had been enlisted for only 
one hundred days. On July 6th, 1865, he was commissioned 
Colonel of the Second Regiment, New Jersey Rifle Corps. At 
that time the military organizations of the State were organized 
and known as the New Jersey Rifle Corps, with General Theo- 
dore Runyon in command. 

General Runyon and Colonel Plume drew the act creating the 
National Guard of the State of New Jersey, and both bent all 
of their energies to securing its passage. James L. Hays, who 
was representing Essex in the State Senate at the time, chaper- 
oned the bill through the Legislature, and the Rifle Corps were 
changed into the National Guard. Colonel Plume's Second 
Regiment of Rifle Corps became the Second Regiment of the 
new Guards, and in April, 1869, he was commissioned as its 
commander. The formation of the regiments into brigades 
followed speedily, and a month later he was made a Brigadier- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 373 



General and given command of the First Brigade. General 
McCIellan ten years later conferred the brevet title of Major- 
General upon him, and in 1885 he was ramed to succeed Mott 
as the Major- General of the State Militia. 

The First Brigade at the time of General Steele's death 
consisted of one regiment of seven companies, one of five, two 
of six, three battalions of three companies each, and one Gatling 
gun company. The regulation regiment of the day required 
ten companies for its formation ; the ideal company embraced 
from eighty to one hundred men. The State laws did not say 
how many companies should constitute a regiment, but fixed 
the minimum of enlisted men in a company at fifty. One of 
the regiments in the brigade had but five companies ; and many 
of the companies in all the regiments could muster but a little 
over the minimum of men. General Steele's report of his last 
State Encampment, which, with its attractions for midsummer 
recreation, serves to draw the largest share of Guardsmen to the 
front, showed an attendance, in the thirty- four companies, of only 
1,500 men. That was scarcely an average of forty- five men to 
the company. Genejal Plume had himself been at the head of 
the brigade for sixteen years, and his practical experience easily 
enabled him to see that aa attendance of 1,500 men at an 
encampment indicated an average attendance of less than forty 
men per company at the other parades and drills. 

So, even on the basis of General Steele's figures, Major-Gen- 
eral Plume saw that the brigade was top-heavy and that there 
was an absurd proportion of officers to rank and file. There 
were 84 legioiental field and staff officers, 21 to each of the 4 
regiments; 57 battalion field and staff officers, 19 to each of the 
3 battalions; 99 company officers, 3 to each of the 33 com- 
panies, and 4 in the Gatling gun company. This total of 244 
commissioned officers formed the proportion of one commis- 
sioned officer to every six men in the brigade. In addition to 
these commissioned officer.-^, there were of non-commissioned 
officers 5 sergeants, 5 corporals and 2 musicians for each of the 
34 companies, a total of 408. These, with the 244 commissioned 



374 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

officerp, made a grand total of 652 commissioned and non-com- 
missioned officers in the force of 1,500 men. 

This proportion of more than two officers out of every five 
men in the brigade made its re-organization an imperative mili- 
tary duty; and Governor Green's attention had been called to 
it before he made way for Governor Abbett. He saw the neces- 
sity of if, but he deemed it better to postpone it till the new 
drill regulations, then promised, had been issued by the General 
Government, when the re- organization could and would be made 
on lines to conform with them. Upon the accession of Governor 
Abbett for his second term, attention was again called to the 
matter, and it was his judgment, too, that it had better be in 
abeyance till the Federal Government had issued its anticipated 
mandate. The expected order did not come fr©m the Secretary 
of War's office till October 3d, 1891. 

The order read as follows : 

"A board of officers having prepared a system of drill regu- 
lations for infantry, which has been approved by the President, 
it is herewith published for the information and government of 
the army, and for the observacce of the militia of the United 
States." 

The order thus prefaced called for the re-organization of the 
National Guard in all the States, on the battalion rather than on 
the regimental basis, or, to be more exact, on the basis of regi- 
mental organizations with not less than two nor more than three 
battalions of four companies each ; and, as it was not formed on 
lines consistent with the newly established system, made an 
overhauling of the entire National Guard of New Jersey 
imperative. It was so palpably necessary that the State Mili- 
tary Board made preparations for the changed order of things, 
and most of the regimental and battalion commandants urged 
action. A specially notable letter encouraging the move was 
written by Colonel Edwin A. Stevens, of Hoboken, whose regi- 
ment, the Second, was afterwards consolidated with other com- 
mands. 

But it was neither necessary nor proper that the new lines 
should be conformed to till the new drill regulations had been 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 375 

formally issued by the War Department. There was some 
question as to the time, and the State military authorities 
through Adjutant- General W. S. Stryker, entered into negotia- 
tions with the Federal authorities. 

" We understand," he wrote, under date of March 29th, to 
the Adjutant- General of the United States Army, "that the 
order of the Secretary of War, dated October 3d, 1891, which 
appears in front of the cew drill regulations issued by the 
^Army and Navy Journal,' would not take effect until the regu- 
lations were printed and issued by the War Department. Has 
this been done, and are we to understand that this order has 
been promulgated and is now in force ? " 

The reply from Washington, bearing the same date, was as 
follows : 

" Respectfully returned to General W. S. Stryker, Adjutant- 
General of N. J., Trenton, N. J., with a copy of the order 
requested inclosed, which has been promulgated and is now in 
force. The system of drill regulations referred to in the order 
has been printed and distributed to the army." 

On receipt of this letter the new drill regulations were 
approved by the State Military Board, and were promulgated 
by Major-General Plume to the National Guard of New Jersey 
in this order : 

Headquarters Division, 
The National, Guard op New Jersey, 
Gbnekal Orders, \ Newark, April 2d, 1892. 

No. 3. / 

The New Drill Regulations for Infantry, prepared by a board of officers of 
the United States Army, of which board Lieutenant-Colonel John C. Bates, 
Twentieth Infantry, was President, having been approved by the President of 
the United States, and published by the Secretary of War for the observance 
of the militia of the United States, are hereby designated as the drill regula- 
tions to be used by the National Guard of New Jersey. 

All infantry exercises and manoeuvers not embraced in that system are pro- 
.hibited, and those therein prescribed will be strictly observed. 
By command of 

Major-General JOSEPH W. PLUME. 
Marvin Dodd, 

Assistant Adjutant-General. 



376 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Having promulgated the new drill regulations, it now 
became General Plume's duty to arrange the re-organization of 
the new brigades. It may be imagined that this wag not an easy 
task. He first dealt with General Sewell's South Jersey brigade, 
and re- organized it through the agency of General Orders No. 
6. As it explains just what was done there, the order is re- 
produced : 

Headquarters Di"\asiON, 
The National Guard of New Jersey, 
Gekeral Orders, \ Newark, April 19th, 1892. 

No. 6. J 

I. In conformity with the new drill regulations, the "Battalion formation" 
is hereby instituted in the Second Brigade. 

II. The Battalions will be organized as follows : 

Companies A, B, F and G of the Third Regiment will constitute the First 
Battalion of that Regiment. 

Companies C, D, E and H of the Third Regiment will constitute the Second 
Battalion of that Regiment. 

Companies A, B, C and D of the Sixth Regiment will constitute the First 
Battalion of that Regiment. 

Companies E, F, H and K of the Sixth Regiment will constitute the Second 
Battalion of that Regiment. 

Companies A, B, C and D of the Seventh Regiment will constitute the 
First Battalion of that Regiment. 

Companies E, F, G and H of the Seventh Regiment will constitute the 
Second Battalion of that Regiment. 

III. One Battalion of each Regiment will be commanded by the Major of 
the Regiment, and the other Battalion by the Senior Captain of that Battalion. 

IV. Details will be made in each Battalion of one First Lieutenant to act 
as Adjutant, and one Sergeant to act as Sergeant-Major of their respective 
Battalions. 

V. The Brigade Commander will report to these Headquarters the names 
of the officers detailed. 

By command of 

Major-General JOSEPH W. PLUME. 
official : 

Marvin Dodd, 

Assistant Adjutant-General. 

The military problems involved in the re-organization of the 
First Brigade were more knotty and intricate, but General 
Steele's death enforced the necessity for action. It was wise 
and opportune that the new formation should be made before 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 377 

the selection of his successor ; else the new brigade might go 
under the command of a Brigadier chosen by the vote of a 
board of officers that had been shuffled out of the service by 
the change. And while the canvass for the succession was still 
in progress General Plume, having perfected his plans for its re- 
organization, issued, on May 7th, 1892, General Orders No. 7, 
Headquarters N. G. N. J., that brought it about. As in the 
case of the order re-arranging the Second Brigade, this order 
itself explains the lines on which the First Brigade was re- 
organized, and is reproduced in full. It reads as follows : 

Headquarters Division, 
The National Guard op New Jersey, 
General Orders, \ Newark, May 21st, 1892. 

No. 7. / 

The following re-organization of the First Brigade is hereby ordered, pre- 
paratory to the " Battalion formation," to take effect on Tuesday, the 31st day 
of May, instant. 

I. Company F, First Regiment, is hereby consolidated into Company C, 
First Regiment. Company D, Fifth Regiment, is hereby consolidated into 
Company G, Fifth Regiment. Company F, Fifth Regiment, is hereby consoli- 
dated into Company H, Fifth Regiment. 

Commandants of Company C, First Regiment, and Companies G and H, 
Fifth Regiment, will select eighty of the best enlisted men of their respective 
companies after consolidation, and return the remainder, through .the proper 
channels, for honorable discharge. 

II. Companies A, B, C, D and E, First Regiment ; Companies C, E, G and 
H, Fifth Regiment, and the Third Battalion, are hereby consolidated into one 
regiment. 

III. The Second and Fourth Regiments are hereby consolidated into one 
regiment. 

IV. The First and Second Battalions, Company G, First Regiment, and 
Company B, Fourth Regiment, are hereby consolidated into one regiment. 

V. The numerical designation of the new regiments above created will be 
announced by the Adjutant-General. 

VI. All Field and Staff officers, and the officers of Company F, First 
Regiment, and Companies D and F, Fifth Regiment, except the Brigade Staff, 
will be placed upon the retired list by the Adjutant-General. 

All Non-commissioned Staff officers, except the Brigade Non-commissioned 
Staff, will be honorably discharged. 

VII. Should any of the Field and Staff officers, who have been retired by 
this order, be elected or appointed to their former offices, they will be com- 
missioned to take rank from the date as given in their former commissions. 



378 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Should any of the Non-commissioned Staff officers, who have been honor- 
ably discharged by this order, be appointed to their former offices, they will 
be warranted under the date of their prior warrants. 

VIII. Any commissioned officer, who has been retired by this order, and 
not re-elected or re-appointed to his fcrmer office, who has faithfully served 
as a commissioned officer over fourteen years, will be retired with a brevet 
rank and commission of not more than one grade higher than the highest rank 
held by him during his term of service. 

IX. Paymasters will at once turn over to the Paymaster of the Brigade all 
moneys remaining in their hands, in compliance with Par. 109 of the new 
compilation of the laws governing the National Guard. 

X. Quartermasters will retain possession of the property for which they are 
responsible until the Quartermaster of the new regiment into which iheir 
organization has been consolidated, is appointed, when they will turn over to 
him all the property, taking duplicate receipts for the same, and forwarding 
one of the receipts to the Quartermaster-General. 

XI. Senior Captains will at once assume command of their respective regi- 
ments, and will retain the same until a field ofiicer has been elected and com- 
missioned. They will also detail a Lieutenant to act as Adjutant until an 
Adjutant has been appointed and commissioned. 

By command of 

Major-General JOSEPH W. PLUME. 
Marvin Dodc, 

Assistant Adjutant-General. 

ColoDel Barnard, whose Fifth Regiment was consolidated out 
of existence under -the new dispensation, failed to take it philo- 
sophically. He claimed that it was a move on the part of the 
Democratic Major- General to put him out of commission and 
defeat his election to General Steele's place, because he was a 
Republican, and he made an appeal to Governor Abbett on the 
ground that General Plume had no right to issue the order. 
The Governor called upon the Major-General for a written 
report, showing what action he had taken in the matter. Gen- 
eral Plume made an exhaustive response. This was referred to 
Attorney- General Stockton for an examination of the legal ques- 
tions involved in the controversy. 

"I read your report to the Attorney- General," Adjutant- 
General Stryker wrote to the Major-General some time subse- 
quently. " He said you were correct in every point you made. 
He complimented you highly on the argument and said he would 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 379 

say to the Governor this morniDg that there was no question 
that the power existed as stated by you." 

The appeal of Colonel Barnard to the Governor led, however, 
to the discovery by the Major-General of a clerical error in the 
inspection-roll of Company F, Fifth Regiment, that was trifling 
in itself but important in its consequences, because it forced a 
new re-organization of the brigade. The error had made it 
appear that Company F was one short of the minimum comple- 
ment of men. A more careful inspection of the roll showed 
that it had the complement and a man to spare. Its consolida- 
tion with other companies was consequently improper, and there- 
fore General Orders No. 9, Headquarters N. G. N. J., June 8th, 
1892, correcting the error and making such other changes in 
General Orders No. 7 as the reinstatement of that company 
made necessary, was as follows : 

Headquarters Division, 
The National Guard of New Jersey, 
General Orders, ) Newark, June 8th, 1892. 

No. 9. I 

General Orders, No. 7, from these Headquarters, dated May 21st, 1892, are 
hereby amended as follows : 

I. Paragraphs 1, 2, 4 and 6 are hereby rescinded. 

II. Company D, late Fifth Regiment, is hereby consolidated into the 
remaining companies of the late Fifth Regiment. 

In making this consolidation each member of Company D will be per- 
mitted, as far as possible, to select the company into which he will be 
consolidated. 

HE. The late First Regiment and Companies C, E, F, G and H, late Fifth 
Regiment, are hereby consolidated into one regiment. 

IV. The late First, Second and Third Battalions and Company B, late 
Fourth Regiment, are hereby consolidated into one regiment. 

V. All Field and Staff officers, and the officers of Company D, late Fifth 
Regiment, except the Brigade Staff, will be placed upon the retired list by the 
Adjutant-General. 

All Non-commissioned Staff officers, except the Brigade Non-commissioned 
Staff, will be honorably discharged. 

By command of 

Major-General JOSEPH W. PLUME. 
official : 

Marvin Dodd, 

Assistant Adjutant- General. 



380 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

The issuing of the latter order was an unwelcome duty to 
the Major-General, and was deeply regretted by the other mem- 
bers of the State Military Board, because the organization called 
for in General Orders No. 7 was far better in every particular 
and strictly in conformity with their judgment, and they have 
taken every opportunity to express their regret at the necessity 
which compelled it.* 

It had become more or lees apparent, before either of the 
First Brigade re-organization orders was made, that Colonel 
Barnard was less acceptable as a candidate than Colonel Camp- 
bell was, and his chances of success had been further weakened 
by the understanding that the more conspicuous Republican, 
Colonel Wanser, was willing to accept the responsibilities of the 
place. In the bitterness of the partisan spirit of the times, it 
was said that Governor Abbett had inspired the re-organization 
with the belief that Wanser might be in the rivalry and for the 
purpose of defeating him. The closeness of the relations 
existing between Allan L. McDermott, whom Wanser had 
defeated in the Mayoralty contest, and the Governor, were 
known of all men, and it was suspected that he had planned the 
re-organization as a reprisal. The story of this chapter shows, 
however, that the movement was the logical sequence of mili- 
tary conditions and requirements without any relation to poli- 
tics. The re-organization plan served, indeed, to take from 
Campbell, who was the only candidate left in the field against 
Wanser, part of the support he had expected in the close battle 
Colonel Wanser was giving him. 

After an exciting contest the election was finally held, in pur- 
suance of an order issued by the Major-General, and Colonel 

* Previous to the execution of the above orders the First Brigade organiza- 
tion was as follows : 

First Regiment, seven companies; Second, five companies; Fourth, six 
companies ; Fifth, six companies ; First Battalion, three companies ; Second, 
three companies ; Third, three companies; Gatling Gun Company, one com- 
pany. 

After the execution of tlie orders it stood. First Eegiment, twelve com- 
panies ; Second, ten companies, two vacancies ; Fourth, eleven companies, one 
vacancy; Gatling Gun Company, one company. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 381 

Wanser was chosen Brigadier- General by a vote of five to four, 
shortly after he had assumed the Mayoralty of Jersey City. 

It still suited the purpose of those who had been displaced 
by the re-organization to insist that it had been effected 
upon political lines, and three years later Lieutenant-Colonel 
Erlenkotter, of Hoboken, who had become a member of the 
Legislature, offered a resolution in the House demanding an 
investigation. General Plume met the demand with his own 
request for a thorough inquiry ; and a Court of Inquiry, con- 
sisting of General Bird W. Spencer, General Wm. C. Heppen- 
heimer and General Edward P. Meany, was appointed by Gov- 
ernor Werts. At the hearing Colonel Stevens, of Hoboken, 
who had failed to secure a rank in the new brigade, was the 
chief apparent sponsor for the charges. Colonel Barnard, 
chagrined because of his failure to reach the Brigadier- General's 
place, was active in forwarding evidence. The Hoboken com- 
panies of the Fourth Regiment had given trouble because of 
the election of H. H. Abernethy to the Colonelcy of the Fourth 
Regiment to which they had been attached, and the Major- Gen- 
eral had disbanded them after they had repeatedly refused to re- 
spond to orders. Because he was a Hoboken man. Colonel Stevens 
was particularly interested in that phase of the controversy. 

General Plume met the attack with the history of the re-organi- 
^ation as it has been unfolded here and the hearing resulted in 
his triumphant vindication. 

Adjutant-General William 8. Stryker, in General Orders No. 
14, reported the finding of the court and its approval by the 
Governor. The court found, in the words of the order — 

"That General Orders No, 7, May 21st, 1892, and General Orders No. 9, 
June 8th, 1892, issued by Major-General Joseph W. Plume, providing for the 
re-organization of the First Brigade, National Guard, were issued by General 
Plume in pursuance of the orders by him received from the Commander-in- 
Chief of the National Guard of the State of New Jersey; 

" That the action of Major-General Joseph W. Plume, in disbanding Com- 
panies G, H, I, K and L, Fourth Kegiment, First Brigade, National Guard, 
was taken after the Colonel commanding the said Fourth Kegiment had 
ofiBcially reported that said companies were in a state of mutiny, and requested 



382 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



that said companies be disbanded. This request of the Colonel commanding 
said regiment was approved by the Brigadier-General commanding the First 
Brigade.; 

"That Major-General Joseph W. Plume, by Special Orders No. 4, June 
10th, 1892, did order an election to be held for field officers of the First Regi- 
ment, National Guard, and detailed an officer of the National Guard to hold 
such election. This order was issued by General Plume, owing to the fact 
that, at the time of the issuance of said order, the First Brigade was without 
a jiermanent commander ; 

"That Major-General Joseph W. Plume has not been guilty of unmilitary 
conduct toward the officers and men of Companies G, H, I, K and L, Fourth 
Kegiment, National Guard ; 

" That Major-General Joseph W. Plume, by all his actions in connection 
with the subject of this inquiry, has shown himself to be an officer eminently 
Avell qualified for the command he now holds." • 

And in the form of a second announcement the Governor 
declared that " the report of the Court of Inquiry in the case 
of Major-General Joseph W. Plume is approved." 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



The Story of the First of the Eace-Track Excitements and of 

THE Birth of the Anti-Kace-Track League is 

Detailed Herein. 




* 



UCH dictatorships as that which the Governor had estab- 
lished over the people are apt to rest upon reeds after 
all ; and this of Mr. Abbett's proved to be a picturesque 
illustration of the rule. The head of a despotism rest- 
ing upon the fealty of subordinates is, in the nature of things, 
forced to buy his peace with them only with costly concessions 
to them. Governor Abbett's lieutenants and underlings would 
have been far less shrewd than they were if they had not seen 
that his power was really theirs ; and they made him pay well 
for their loyalty. They made demands upon him for legislation 
representing all kinds of excesses, extravagances, oppressions 
and corruptions, that must have irritated his conscience into a 
state of constant rebellion. To keep himself in favor with the 
crowd whom he had called to his aid in working out the sena- 
torial problem before him, he was, neverthless, forced to yield 
to every importunity, to wink at every extravagance, to close 
his eye to every corruption of theirs. To refuse to approve was 
but to create an enmity that might drive some one of its hireling 
props to step from under his dynasty and to have it tumble 
about his ears. 

The race-track question provoked an agitation in 1891 that 
shook the autocracy from center to circumference. The Mon- 
mouth race-course that, with its midsummer meets, made Long 
Branch and the seacoast resorts that surrounded it the gayest of 
summer capitals, had half reconciled the State to a little stretch 
of conscience in its behalf, and little freaks of legislation that 

(383) 



384 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

were occasionally indulged in to aid it had provoked no wide- 
spread revolt. But it was with manifest concern that the people 
saw less favored courses opened under the shelter of these laws } 
and their indignation swelled beyond bounds over the establish- 
ment of resorts at either end of the State where the horse and 
the paddock were but covers for open gambling. One of these 
was that maintained at Gloucester City, a suburb of Camden, 
under the supervision of William J. Thompson. The other 
was located at Guttenberg, one of the little Hudson river towns 
in Hudson county, and directly opposite New York. Thompson 
had been a barkeeper in Philadelphia. He was keen and 
shrewd, and he hoarded his earnings till he had amassed enough 
for the purchase of a tract of land on the Camden front of 
the Delaware opposite Philadelphia. This he turned into a 
pleasure ground, and it became a popular trysting place on Sun- 
days for the Philadelphia beer-drinkers who found the bars of 
their own town closed against them. Thompson became famous, 
locally, for the planked shad spreads he provided there ; and he 
brought himself into the notice of the public men of the State 
by inviting them to banquets in which the planked shad was the 
choice feature of the menu. As his wealth accumulated he ex- 
tended his domain. . He purchased water rights for the fishing 
privileges they included, and, looking inland, spread his posses- 
sions over a vast acreage of territory. Upon the lands he built 
stables and had a track graded, and horse-racing went on there 
the year around. Enormous rabbles of unsightly-looking sports 
gathered at them to bet and gamble ; and from the gate receipts 
and the sale of privileges to the " bookmakers " he, in the course 
of a few years, amassed a seven- figure fortune. 

Dennis McLaughlin was the moving spirit in the track at 
Guttenberg. He associated John Carr, who had once been a 
Justice of the Peace in the neighborhood where he was most 
potential, Nicholas V. Crusius, a blubber-like sport of Hoboken, 
and one Walbaum, known well to all the bookmakers of New 
York, with him. They four laid out a patch of land near the 
brow of the Palisades as a race-track, and another horde of ill- 
favored betting men and women flocked to it to help make them 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



385 



rich. It was common report that they divided |4,000 a day 
between them, and as the racing season was quite as endless a 
one there as that at Gloucester City, their annual income from 
the place was something enormous. 

The opening of these resarts to the kind of people who patro- 
nized them served to start an inquiry, in public quarters, into 
the gambling laws of the State, and the result was the with- 
drawal of all the 
legislative counte- 
nance that had been 
extended to pool- 
selling and race- 
track betting for the 
protection of the 
midsummer meets 
at Monmouth. New 
Jersey was willing 
to lose Monmouth 
if she must have 
Guttenberg and 
Gloucester City as 
complements of it. 
But by a perversity 
of fortune the only 
track that was hurt 
by the repeal of 
these favoring laws 
was the one that the 
people were half 
willing to see open. 
It had no repressive eflPect whatever upon the more obnoxious 
places that had sprung up under its shadow. The good people of 
Camden frequently hauled Thompson to the bar of justice; but 
Judge Hugg, the magistrate before whom he was arraigned, owed 
his place to Thompson's influence, and he was let go with a light 
fine as often as he was arraigned. The attempt to punish the 
managers of the Guttenberg track did not even reach the point 

25 




William J. Thompson. 



386 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

of arraignment. The business of that resort was one of the 
highly-protected industries of Hudson county. Sheriff Davis's 
grand juries set their face resolutely against their indictment, 
no matter how convincing and conclusive the evidence presented 
against them. Rev. John L. Scudder, a bright and public- 
spirited young minister, who had then recently been called to the 
pulpit of the Tabernacle Congregational Church, in Jersey City, 
organized frfquent raids upon the place and produced no end of 
witnesses before the grand jury ; but their testimony went for 
nothing. One of the particular functions of the grand juries 
seemed to be to close their ears to all that might be said against 
the Guttenberg den. And so the trial and conviction by the 
courts of the managers and their aides was systematically frus- 
trated. No amount of coaxing or denunciation on the part of 
Judge Manning M. Knapp could stir these forsworn inquisi- 
tors to the discharge of their duty in the premises, and they 
were so brazen and defiant — both the gamblers and the grand 
juries who shielded them from the terrors of the law — that the 
classic-featured Judge grew restive under the sense of his help- 
lessness as a public mentor, and one morning while denouncing 
a contumacious grand jury in burning words for the shame its 
inactivity was bringing upon the county, he burst a blood- 
vessel in a moment of overwhelming indignation, and expired 
on his Bench under the eyes of the people whom he was so 
zealously endeavoring to serve. 

For anyone to face such discouraging conditions as these with 
an act restoring her lost privileges to Monmouth Park, needed 
an audacity that had a dash of courage in it. Assemblyman 
William T. Parker, a Monmouth county Republican, ventured to 
do it during the legislative session of 1890, with an act taking 
the race-course betting- booths out of the category of disorderly 
houses. The Monmouth course was in his district. It brought 
wealth and patronage to the farmers and tradesmen in its vicinity, 
and he felt that he was but fairly representing his people in 
moving for the re-opening of the closed gates. He succeeded 
in forcing the act through, and it was among those left in the 
Governor's hands at the close of the session. It attracted but 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 387 

little attention till one day, near the end of the time for which 
he could consider passed bills, the Governor dropped a hint in 
the newspapers that, while the people interested in the race- 
tracks had besieged him to approve the bill, not a single man 
opposed to it had called upon him. 

"A race-track that had been laid out at Linden, near Elizabeth, 
awaited just such a license as this act of Parker's conferred," 
said the venerable Rev. Dr. Kempshall, an aggressive Presby- 
terian divine of Elizabeth, " and the moment we saw that little 
notice in the newspapers that Saturday morning our people were 
thrown into a ferment of excitement. Before I began the 
morning services at my church the next day, we organized a 
little committee and sent a man to the door of each other church 
in the city to summon the people to attend an impromptu mass 
meeting for the expression of the public sentiment against this 
race-track license act. We had to move quickly because the 
time was short ; only three days remained for the Governor to 
make up his mind as to what he would do with the bill. That 
Sunday morning meeting of ours was the nucleus of the Anti- 
Race-Tfack League of the State. The hasty mass meeting was 
an enormous success and on Monday we poured into Trenton 
such a delegation of protesting citizens that the Governor con- 
cluded that he could not afford to ignore them. When they 
learned what we had done, churches in other cities joined in the 
demonstration and committees from them helped to swell the 
multitude. Before we left the Executive Chamber Monday 
afternoon, we had completed the organization of the Anti- Race- 
Track League that for four years afterwards made such a bitter 
contest against State recognition of the gamblers and touts of 
the race-courses." 

Rev. Dr. Kempshall was made the President of the League, 
with a list of officers embracing John T. Brown of Paterson, 
S. S. Thompson of Elizabeth and James S. Yard of Freehold 
for Vice Presidents ; Rev. S. B. Meeser of Paterson for Secre- 
tary and Treasurer, and Thomas N. McCarter of Newark, Caleb 
T. Bailey of Asbury Park, Charles C. McBride of Elizabeth, 
and Frank Hughes of Paterson as an Executive Committee. 



388 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

They selected of their number to urge Governor Abbett to 
refuse his signature to the act a delegation consisting of Rev. 
Dean McNulty of Paterson, Rev. J. H. Whitehead, J. J. Bowes,. 
Frank Hughes, W. O. Fayerweather, Rev. C. L. Meriam, Rev. 
S. B. Meeser, Samuel Phelps, James M. Cleveland, Rev. J. C. 
Jackson and John Reynolds, all of Passaic county ; Rev. N^ 
McAllister, Howard Richards, C. C. Taintor, C. C McBride, 
J. M. Watson, Charles Jaquette, Rev. E. W. Burr, all of Union 
county ; Rev. C. Martin of Moorestown, Rev. Charles P. Glover 
of Ewing, Rev. Dr. John Dixon, Rev. C. M. Aurand and Rev. 
H. Woolverton of Trenton, and Rev. D. B. Hains, 8. C. Cowart 
and James S. Yard of Freehold. 

When he had heard both sides, and all sides, Governor Abbett 
felt that an approval of the bill would be an offense to the moral 
sense of the State that he could not risk, and he filed it aw^y, 
with a lot of other waste of the session, in the State Library. 
The racing men were wroth at this disposal of the measure by 
which they had set so much store, and their open threat to square 
accounts with him was the first shock that menaced the solidity 
of his autocracy. 

During the agitation it came to the knowledge of Rev. Dr. 
Kempshall that the good Dr. Joseph B. Roe, who represented 
Gloucester in the State Senate, and whose vote had aided to put 
the bill through the Senate, was a conspicuous churchman — 
deacon, in fact, of a church of the same denomination with that 
to which Dr. Kempshall belonged. Dr. Kempsball thought 
that that was an awful thing for a Presbyterian deacon to be 
doing, and when the Synod met a month or two later he called 
the case to its attention and proposed that the good doctor should 
be disciplined. The passage of the Race-track bill was de- 
nounced by resolution, and Dr. Roe was inferentially discredited. 
His term in the Senate expired that fall, and when he stood for 
re-election not even the admirable record he made later in the 
year in connection with the Hudson county ballot-box fraud 
investigation was sufficient to save him from defeat. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

Which Recoukts the Story of the Coal Combixe and of its Dis- 
memberment BY Chancellor McGill, and Incidentally Exhibits 
ITS Bearing upon Governor Abbett's Senatorial Canvass. 




HE SESSION of 1892 furnished another incident that 
shadowed Governor Abbett's power even more seri- 
ously. The race- track legislation had apparently left 
no trace of its antagonisms behind it. Parker was 
returned to his seat from Monmouth by an increased majority. 
Every one of the seven districts from which a new Senator was 
to be chosen elected a Democrat, and the Democrats won the 
Legislature in both branches by almost unwieldy majorities. 
They were a reckless crowd — the personal followers and depend- 
ents of the bosses — and before the session was over they had 
been betrayed into giving the sanction of law to a grasping rail- 
road combination, which became famous as the " Coal Combine." 
This consolidation of the largest of the railroads that handle 
the coal output of the anthracite region, with a view to " bear- 
ing" the New York market and "jacking up" the price of the 
product, became a scandal. The combination was of special 
interest to New Jersey householders and factory-owners because 
it is mainly from those extensive coal-beds in Pennsylvania that 
their hearth-stones and furnaces are supplied. The story of the 
combination is admirably outlined in a decision subsequently 
made by Chancellor McGill, and it is from that decision (reported 
in 5 Dickinson's Equity Reports) that the facts here produced 
are taken. 

The coal reaches New York from these mines over several 
lines — the New Jersey Central in conjunction with the Lehigh 
and Sufquehanna, the Philadelphia and Reading in conjunc- 
tion with the Lehigh Valley, the Delaware, Lackawanna and 

(389) 



390 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Western, the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the Pennsyl- 
vania. The coal business of the Jersey Central and its ally, 
the Lehigh and Susquehanna, was conducted by capitalists inter- 
ested in the two roads under the name of the Lehigh and 
Wilkesbarre Coal Company. That of the Philadelphia and 
Reading was done under the guise of another corporation known 
as the Reading Coal Company. The Philadelphia and Reading^ 
boasted of a production in 1891 of 8,203,460 tons of coal, and 
in its prospectus claimed that, when allowance was made for the 
thickness of the veins and the extent to which other coal-beds 
had been depleted, it alone owned fifty per cent, of the unmined 
deposit of all these extensive coal-fields. Its outlet to New 
York was the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company. The Jersey 
Central's lessee, the Lehigh and Susquehanna, controlled, through 
the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal Company, another large area 
of coal- land. Its proportion of the entire output of the region 
could not have been less than twenty per cent., and Chancellor 
McGill's conclusion that between them seventy per cent, of all 
the coal in the anthracite mines was at their disposal may be 
regarded as a conservative one. 

It can easily be seen that a combination between these roads, 
with their auxiliary mining companies, to go jointly into 
the business of mining coal, would enable them to produce for 
less and sell for more, and steps were taken in 1891 to form 
such an alliance. There were intimations that the Delaware, 
Lackawanna and Western Railroad Company and the Delaware 
and Hudson Canal Company were eventually to join the league, 
and the movement had the aspect of an ultimate combination of 
the five other anthracite coal roads against the Pennsylvania. 
Such an alliance must needs be perfected cautiously, however. 
Because of an act of 1885 prohibiting the leading of a domestic 
corporation to a foreign corporation, it wa=5 not possible for the 
Jersey Central to make a direct league with the Philadelphia 
and Reading, which was the object really aimed at; and the 
necessity of makiog the link through the agency of a New 
Jersey corporation forced them to whip the devil around the 
stump. The organization, by a party of gentlemen consisting, 
of President McLeod and five other officers of the Philadelphia 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



391 



and Reading, of what was to be known as the Port Reading 
Railroad Company, was the first step towards the making of the 
combination. The object of this new company was to extend a 
road from Bound Brook, on the Philadelphia and Reading, over- 
land to tide- water on the Arthur Kill, where an extensive coal 
depot was to be established. Its designated capital was 
$2,000,000. It was to have its business headquarters nominally 
at Kaighn's Point, N. J., where the Camden ferry of the Phila- 
delphia and Reading was located. It had no assets apart from 
the Philadelphia and 
Reading; it was 
plainly a wheel within 
the Philadelphia and 
Reading wheel. The 
same day this incor- 
poration was made, 
other officers and 
agents of the Phila- 
delphia and Reading 
formed the Port Read- 
ing Construction Com- 
pany, which imme- 
diately entered into a 
contract with the Phil- 
adelphia and Reading 
to build the Port 
Reading road, and 
$2,000 was the plainly 
inadequate cash capital with which it commenced business. 

To the insignificant, dependent and irresponsible railroad 
corporation which was thus formed and whose line was to be 
thus built, the Jersey Central Railroad soon afterwards delivered 
itself, with its more than forty tributary roads, its capital stock of 
$30,000,000, its assets of close on to $70,000,000, its great 
water-front franchises, its stores of rolling stock, its depots and 
locomotives and workshops, under a lease, the obs2rvance of the 
terms of which was guaranteed by a $2,000,000 bond of the 




Robert Adrain. 



392 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Philadelphia and Reading ; and when the papers had been com- 
pleted the leagued roads were ready for the joint business that 
had brought them into alliance. Even after the plans had been 
perfected there were yet weaknesses about them that left them 
open to attack, and for the purpose of curing them the allied 
corporations offered to the Legislature of 1892 a bill legalizing 
the combination. Ex- Congressman Miles Ros9, then the most 
considerable political factor in the middle section of the State, 
managed the coal market in New York for the Lehigh Valley 
or the Philadelphia and Reading, and the passage of the act was 
entrusted to his skill and discretion. 

When the newspapers made announcement of the alliance and 
explained its purposes and results, the people of New Jersey be- 
came restive, and there was no end of clamor for legislative 
interference that would overthrow the combine. Soon after the 
opening of the Legislature of 1892, the matter was brought to 
the attention of both branches — by Hinchliffe, of Passaic, in the 
Senate, and by Lane, of Union, in the Assembly. Both intro- 
duced resolutions assailing the combination as an unlawful one, 
and called for a. committee of investigation. Mr. Lane's mani- 
festo was hurled in advance of that of Mr. Hinchliffe, and it 
attracted the wider attention. There was a noticeable laxity in 
the pursuit of both investigations, however, after they had been 
ordered, and no report had been heard from either of the special 
committees, when Assemblyman Leonard Kalisch, of Essex, 
boldly introduced a bill setting the sell of the State's authority 
upon the crafty lease. It was evident from the momeut the bill 
made its appearance upon the files of the House that it was 
intended to " go," and that the entire pressure of a powerful 
clique of political managers was to be exerted in behalf of its 
passage. 

These gentlemen were all Democrats high in the counsels of 
the party, and they succeeded in giving to the act a partisan 
aspect that furnished the Democratic Assembly with a party 
pretext for pushing it along to the statute books. It was said 
that the backbone of the Republican party in New Jersey was 
its alliance with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and that 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 393 

the bestowal of this favor upon the Lehigh Valley or its name- 
sake, the Philadelphia and Reading, would bring to the aid of 
the Democrats, in their political campaigns, an equally powerful 
and equally wealthy railroad corporation. Other arguments ad- 
vanced in its behalf were that, as two roads working together 
would produce with less cost, the people would realize the bene- 
fit in the reduced price of coal, and that the act merely permit- 
ted such a lease as the United Railroads had made in one year 
to the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and as the Morris and 
Essex had made another year to the Delaware, Lackawanna 
and Western. So that it was urged as not only a good stroke 
of politics for a Democratic Legislature, but as a thing that 
was itself fair in principle. These arguments were but a con- 
venient cover for the baser considerations by which members of 
both Houses were being persuaded to support it; and during 
the excitements that ensued the New York " Herald" made open 
charges of bribery, that they never dared to subject to the tests 
of libel suits, against several members of the Legislature. 

Notwithstanding the fact that the disgraceful character of the 
methods employed by the lobby to advance the act were an open 
secret, the bill was rushed out of the committee- room to the 
House calendar and whipped through its three readings to final 
passage at a single sitting. Schoolmaster Eugene C. Cole, the 
«harp-tongued Republican member from Cape May, tried to 
block it with an adverse minority report, and made a handsome 
speech against it. John Woodhull Beekman, an odd genius, 
representing one of the Democratic districts in Middlesex, and 
Kalisch, the father of the bill, espoused it. Beekman subse- 
quently claimed, with some degree of plausibility, that the act 
would have given enormous impetus to business in his locality. 

" It would have established near my home," he said, " the 
greatest coal depot in the world, and of course I was in favor 
of it." 

J. Herbert Potts, of Hudson, seconded Cole, but all their 
efforts were fruitless. 

Potts tried to impale the swiftly- speeding measure on a point 
of order that, under the rules, it could not be advanced two 



394 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

stages in one day, but Speaker James J. Bergen took him oflf^ 
his feet with the announcement that the rules had been sus- 
pended ; and through the act rushed by a vote of 35 to 17. 

In the affirmative were Beekman, Bergen, Carroll J., Carroll 
T. J.j^Cavanagh, Coyle, Daly, Davidson, Dempsey, Dupuy, 
Flynn, Glorieux, Hardin, Heaney, Honce, Kalisch, Lane, Law- 
less, Magner, Moylan, Nash, Neider, Parker J., Smith J. F., 
Smith Thos., ^Snyder, Strimple, Swartwout, Tahen, Tumulty^ 

Ulrich, Warne, Wil- 
son, Wright, Zeller. 

In the negative were 
Baxter, Burns, Ernst, 
Gledhill, Hagerty, 
Hoffman, Hutchinson, 
Ketcham, Niece, 
Packer, Post, Potts, 
Ross, Smith F. D., 
Stokes, Strahan, Tine. 
The act was hastened 
to the Senate, which 
had been held in ses- 
sion by President 
Adrain beyond hours 
to receive it, so that it 
would be in parlia- 
mentary position for 

Henrj' D. Winton. . , . , 

consideration on the 
next morning. Adrain was the chief lieutenant of ex- Con- 
gressman Miles Ross, and naturally shared his interest in 
its passage. When the morning came, however, it was dis- 
covered that some of the Democratic Senators were still in 
haggling humor, and President Adrain abstained from drop- 
ping the gavel and calling the Senate to order while they were 
being put under additional pressure. When he finally called the 
Senate together the bill was rapidly advanced to the stage of 
final passage. Senator Gardner, of Atlantic, punctured it keenly 
as it flitted along, but without crippling it. Adrain, Barker^^ 




MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 395^ 

Barrett, Butcher, Cornish, Fowler, Hinchliffe, Hudspeth, Marsh, 
Martin, McMickle, Miller and Perkins voted for it. 

Senator Henry D. Winton, editor of the Hackensaek " Demo- 
crat," who represented Bergen county in the Senate, was the 
only Democrat who joined with Senators Cranmer, Gardner,^ 
Rogers and Rue, Republicans, in the vote against it. Senator 
Winton had noted the provision that the act was to cease to be 
operative twenty-four hours after the lease it was intended to 
ratify had been filed as a freak of legislation that at least was 
not in good form ; and of course he fully understood and appre- 
ciated its monopoly tendency. As the Democratic party had 
committed itself against trusts and combines, he found good 
party reasons also for casting his vote against it. And, beyond 
all these considerations, he felt that he could not afford to be 
identified with the methods employed to pass it. 

The bill was sent, with a great mass of other legislation en- 
acted by the two Houses during the session, to Governor Abbett's 
office on sine die adjournment. He had thirty days within which 
to dispose of it. Because it had been passed ostensibly to bring 
to the back of the Democratic party as big a railroad as that 
which the Republican party had at its back, and because it was 
especially desired by so powerful a lieutenant of his as Miles 
Ross, it was at first assumed that he would favor it with his 
signature at once. He delayed, however, and gave the news- 
papers an opportunity to inflame public sentiment against it till, 
if he had been ever so much inclined, he would scarcely have 
dared to sign it. And a day or two before th*e expiration of ita 
time he dropped an intimation through the New York " World,'* 
which in common with almost all the New York newspapers 
had bean fierce in its denunciation of the measure, that he would 
be forced to disapprove it. Senators and Assemblymen who 
had compromised themselves by voting for the act, on the assur- 
ance that he would approve it, fl jcked to his office in New York 
to reason with him ; but he had made up his mind. He was 
deaf to all their pleadings, and on the last day allowed him for 
its consideration he filed it among the lost bills of the session,, 
with a special message explaining that the Houses had passed it 



396 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 




on a specific engagememt of the leagued roads that they would 
not increase the price of coal to New Jersey consumers, but that 
he had found it impossible to sign it because of his inability to 
force them to put this engagement in such shape as that they 
would be bound by it. 

The public excitement aroused by the passage of the act was 
so great that the Democratic leaders scarcely felt it safe to risk 
their chances of success in the succeeding Assembly campaigns 
even to the gerrymander; and there was a notable exclusion 

from the conventions of 
Assembly statesmen 
who had given their 
votes for the bill. All 
through Essex word 
went abroad that none 
of the Assemblymen 
whose names appeared 
iti the record of the 
" aye " vote should be 
(>ut in renomination and 
the order was carried 
out. Miles Ross had 
the supurb audacity to 
run his three Middlesex 
Assemblymen through 
the local conventions ; 
andj probably because 
it was understood that 
the act would promote the establishment of great coal depots on 
the Raritan Bay shore, the people re-elected them. Johnston 
Cornish, too, who represented the county of Warren at the time 
succeeded subsfquently in making a successful canvass for Con- 
gress in spile of the support he had given to the bill. Mr. 
Cornish was the prime Democratic factor in Warren county. 
His father had been something of a boss there before him and 
had been a predecessor of his son in the State Senate. The 
younger Cornish succeeded in compassing a nomination for the 




Johnston Cornish. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 397' 

Senate even before he had attained the constitutional age of 
thirty years ; but he withdrew when his age digqualification 
was brought to his notice. At the next election, in 1890, he 
won the seat and there he so strengthened his lines that even 
his vote for the Coal Combine bill was not a sufficiently potent 
argument to defeat him when in 1892 he ran against Ben- 
jamin F. Howey for a seat in Congress. These were, however, 
exceptional instances of good fortune. Wherever in other parts 
of the State an advocate of the coal combine measure ventured 
to seek re-election he encountered popular opposition that defeated 
him. 

Miles Ross was angered beyond expression when he learned of 
the lame and impotent conclusion of his winter's work, and with 
the Senators and Assemblymen whose votes had passed the bill, 
openly charged that the Governor had betrayed them and as 
openly predicted that he should be punished for the betrayal by 
the less of the United States Senatorship. In the hope of 
making up in popular support for the machine support that he 
thus stood the chance of losing, Governor Abbett started out in 
relentless pursuit of the coal syndicate, which was steadily pro- 
fiting its combination by advancing the price of its mine 
products. The combination still insisted that the lease was 
good even without the legislation he had defeated, and the 
legal inquiries made by himself and that ablest of advocates, 
Attorney- General Stockton, led them to the conclusion that there 
might be something of basis for the boast. They had put their 
combined skill and genius upon the problem for several weeks 
before they were prepared for the attack. When they had equip- 
ped themselves they advanced upon the leagued companies front, 
rear and flank. The decisive battle was now on an application 
made, upon information, to Chancellor Alexander T. McGill by 
the Attorney- General and Frederic W. Stevens, on behalf of 
the State, for an order requiring the leagued companies to show 
cause why an injunction should not issue against them. The 
immediate object of the information upon which the injunction 
was asked was to have the lease by which the Central Railroad 
Company had turned its great properties over to the little Port 




Alexander T. McGill. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 399 

Reading Railroad and the tripartite agreement into which those 
two roads and the Philadelphia and Reading had entered, declared 
void on the ground that they tended to create a monoply of the 
anthracite coal trade in New Jersey by stifling competition 
between the contracting corporations and thereby to increase the 
price of the coal which Jerseymen most consumed. The coun- 
sel sought a mandatory decree requiring the Port Reading Com- 
pany to give back to the Jersey Central the property it had 
leased to it and forbidding the three corporate defendants from 
all future combinations to arbitrarily increase the price of coal 
to the inhabitants of the State of New Jersey. 

The case was presented and argued with matchless skill on 
both sides. Those who heard it say that Attorney- General 
Stockton's speech stamped him as one of the greatest pleaders 
in the country. Arrayed against him and Mr. Stevens were 
the shrewd, sleek and oily ex- Chancellor Benjamin Williamson 
of Elizabeth, Robert W. De Forest of New York and Samuel 
Dickson of Philadelphia, on behalf of the Central, and by 
Thomas N. McCarter and John R. Emery of Newark, both 
prominent at the New Jersey bar, and John T. Johnson of 
Philadelphia, on behalf of the Philadelphia and Reading. The 
general contention of the State's lawyers was that the lease to 
the Port Reading was in violation of an act forbidding the leas- 
ing of domestic railroads to foreign corporations without the 
express consent of the Legislature, and that the violation of this 
law lay in the fact that the lease to the Port Reading was really 
a lease to the Philadelphia and Reading, a Pennsylvania cor- 
poration. During the course of the arguments, the counsel for 
the defendants succeeded in injecting into the discussion some 
neat technical points that taxed the best mental resources of the 
Chancellor. The Chancellor's decision, rendered in August, 
1892, shortly after the argument, was to the effect that the lease 
was practically to a foreign corporation, and that it was in vio- 
lation of the duty the Jersey Central owed to the State. The 
decision is of such wide interest, and so clearly defines the rela- 
tions of the corporations to the community from which they 
derive their franchises and existence, that it must be liberally 
quoted from : 



400 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



" Corporate bodies that engage in a public or quasi-public occupation are- 
created by the State upon the hypothesis that they will be a public benefit," 
he writes; "they enjoy privileges that individuals cannot have. Perpetual or 
certain life is accorded to them. Usually the authority of the right of eminent 
domain is delegated to them, often to be exercised in whatever locality they 
may be pleased to designate. The use of the common highways is frequently 
subordinated to their operations and, indeed, the individual is compelled, even^ 
in his own home, to submit without redress to discomforts incident to their 
lawful operation which he would not be required to tolerate from other sources. 
Thus they are given special privileges because of the benefits they are pre- 
sumed to confer upon communities. Railways afford speedy and comfortable 
passage to and from divers parts of the country, carry produce of mines, farms- 
and factories to markets, distribute industries throughout the land, feed the- 
multitudes in populous cities, and accomplish many other beneficent ends. 
Water, gas, telegraph and similar corporations also render to the public bene- 
fits which readily suggest themselves to the mind as it contemplates their 
work. While the State confers special privileges upon these favorites it at the- 
same time exacts from them duties which also tend to the public welfare. The- 
Avhole scheme of the laws of their organization is to equip and control them 
as instruments for the public good. Such corporations hold their powers not 
merely in trust for the pecuniary profit of their stockholders, but also in trust 
for the public weal. The impress for public good is stamped upon their very 
being, and it becomes a duty which, though not prescribed in express language 
of the law, is to be implied from the nature of every power conferred. When, 
therefore, it appears that such a corporation, unmindful of this plain duty, acts 
prejudicially to the public in order to make undue gains and profits for its 
stockholders, it uses its powers in a manner not contemplated by the law which 
confers them. The use becomes abuse and is tantamount to excess of power. 

"I appreciate the strength of this argument, but, as I have said, I do not 
need to afiirm it to justify my conclusions, and therefore content myself with.- 
the mere statement of it. 

"Anticipating that I might hold that the act of 1880 is constitutional, and 
that it gives power to the Central Railroad Company to lease its road and 
franchises, the Attorney-General further urges, first, that the lease in question 
is in reality made to a foreign corporation ; and, second, that such a lease is- 
forbidden by the statute approved May 2d, 1885, entitled 'An act respecting 
the leasing of railroads,' except under conditions which do not exist. 

"I agree with him in both of these propositions. 

" Equity looks at the substance, not merely the outward form. The transac- 
tion of the twelfth of January, 1892, between the three defendants consists, in 
form, of a lease between two of them, and a guarantee of that lease, coupled 
with a traflBc agreement to which all three of them are jmrties. Such is the- 
form. But when the fact that a law which, in its terms, prohibits a lease to a 
foreign corporation without legislative sanction, is contemplated, and regard is 
had to the characters and relations of the contracting parties, and to the 
terms of the instruments they have entered into, and the simultaneous execu- 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 401 



tion of those instruments, a substantial status differing from the form is dis- 
closed. The statute forbade a lease to the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad 
Company, a foreign corporation, until a law should be enacted which would 
approve such a lease, but it did not prohibit a lease to a domestic corporation. 
The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, through its officers and 
servants, had promoted the organization of the Port Reading Railroad Com- 
pany under the General Railroad law of this State for the purpose of build- 
ing and operating a short railway in connection with its system. The capital 
of that company is $2,000,000. The road is only twenty miles long. When 
the lease was made it was but partially constructed. Upon such assets as it 
then had there existed a mortgage for $1,500,000, an amount probably in ex- 
cess of the value of those assets. No one can for a moment believe that the 
Central Railroad Company of New Jersey would commit its extensive rail- 
road, with its depots, stations, terminals, rolling stock, ferries and forty auxili- 
ary roads, in all representing assets valued at nearly $70,000,000, to the keep- 
ing of so irresponsible a lessee, and depend upon it alone for the security of 
that property and the payment of a rental which, for a single year, will ex- 
ceed the value of the lessee's entire property. The mere statement of such a 
proposition exhibits a business absui'dity. The lessee was not only irresponsi- 
ble under such a trust, but was not in position to afford the Central Railroad 
Company even a temporary benefit from alliance with it. Without the sus- 
taining arm of the Philadelphia and Reading Company a lease to it would 
not have been thought of. 

" The recitals of the guarantee admit this absurdity by representing that 
the Central Railroad Company would not lease until the Philadelphia and 
Reading Company, entering into the same transaction, and as a party thereto, 
executed the paper called the ' guarantee.' That paper expressly embodies 
the lease and bound the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company to the 
virtual execution of it. The lease, so called, with the Port Reading Company 
was a mere form. The guarantee was the really operative and important 
paper. Without it the Central Railroad would not be assured of its rental and 
the traffic that was necessary to make the proposed alliance profitable, for the 
Port Reading Railroad Company, as a distinct entity, was irresponsible and 
without power to assure traffic. 

" But more than this, the Port Reading Railroad Company is, for all sub- 
stantial purposes, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company. It is 
confessedly owned by individuals who represent and serve the Philadelphia 
and Reading. Its capital stock, save a few shares, has gone, or is to go, to a 
construction company which unquestionably belongs to the same interest. 
The construction company is officered by the servants of the Philadelphia and 
Reading Railroad Company. It has commenced work with an insignificant 
paid capital, $2,000, and it has confessedly drawn moneys from the Philadel- 
phia and Reading Railroad to enable it to build the Port Reading road. The 
business offices of both the Port Reading Railroad and the Port Reading Con- 
struction Company are identical with the principal office of the Philadelphia 
and Reading Railroad Company. A glance at the execution of the guarantee 

26 



402 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



exhibits that the same individuals are President and Secretary of both the 
Port Eeading Railroad Company and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad 
Company. By official reports stockholders of the Philadelphia and Reading 
Railroad Company are informed that the Port Reading Railroad is 'their' 
road, and, in substance, that it is expected to earn an adequate return for ' their' 
investment in it. In the face of such a situation it is idle to say that the Port 
Reading Railroad Company is not in all things, save in its intangible and 
unsubstantial corporate entity, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Com- 
pany. It is only necessary to state these particulars to satisfy the mind of the 
justice of this conclusion. 

"It follows from the conclusion reached, that the intervention of the Port 
Reading Company as nominal lessee is but a device to disguise the real nature 
■of the transaction. It is demonstrated as clearly as words could state it, that 
the object of the transaction was to place the Central Railroad within the 
Philadelphia and Reading Railroad system. The Central's reliance was not 
upon the small unfinished road, with a comparatively petty capital and little 
or no valuable assets, but upon the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Com- 
pany, that estimated its assets at $200,000,000. It is sticking in the bark to 
say that in this transaction the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company 
is not the real lessee, and that the guarantee executed by it is not the real 
lease. The misnomer of papers and the use of a nominal entity as nominal 
lessee does not change the substance of the transaction with which this court 
deals. The situation here may be summed up in the words of Vice Chancellor 
Kindersley in Attorney-General v. The Great Northern Railway Co., 1 Drew. 
& S. 157, 6 Jur. (N. S.) 1006, 29 L. J. 794: 'A more flimsy device, when the 
particulars are once known, it is impossible to imagine. It may succeed for a 
time in baffling persons who may have an interest in preventing its being 
done, and has succeedecl, but it was a mere crafty contrivance to evade the 
requisition of the law on the subject of joint stock companies.' 

" It must not be thought that courts are powerless to strip off disguises that 
are designed to thwart the purposes of the law. The mere suggestion of such 
a condition is an insult to the intelligence of the judiciary. Whenever such 
disguises are made apparent they can readily be disrobed. The difficulty is 
in showing the disguises, not in penetrating them when they appear. 

" Now what is the effect of the act of 1885? 

" It consists of three sections. The first forbids any railroad corporation to 
lease its road or franchises to any fort ign corporation ; or to unite, consolidate 
or merge its stock, property, franchises or road with those of a foreign corpora- 
tion until the consent of the Legislature of this State thereto shall have been 
obtained. The second prescribes how that consent of the Legislature shall be 
obtained. The third section repeals inconsistent legislation. In short, the effect 
of the act is to withdraw the power to lease given by the statute of 1880, so far 
as a lease to a foreign corporation is concerned. 

" The defendants attack this act by claiming that it contravenes two require- 
ments of the Constitution, contained in paragraph 11, section 7, article IV,, 
one of which is that the Legislature shall not pass any private or special law 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 403 



-' granting to any corporation, association or individual any exclusive privilege, 
immunity or franchise whatever,' and the other of which is that ' the Legis- 
lature shall pass no special act conferring corporate powers.' Their argu- 
ment is that the proposed lease is to be without validity until it shall be 
approved by an act of the Legislature passed for that purpose, and that as any 
lease, to be approved, will be replete with conditions, covenants and terms 
which, in their very nature, are special and inapplicable to any person, natural 
or artificial, other than the contracting parties therein, any, even general, act 
ratifying it must confer a particularly limited power, and to some extent 
exclusive privilege, upon the corporate parties to the lease. 

" If this argument should be applied to a law specially passed to sanction a 
-particular lease, it might be regarded as sound, but as no such law has been 
passed it is obvious that its validity cannot be discussed or determined. The 
law now considered is the act of 1885. That act does not confer either a 
power or a privilege. Its object is to restrict or condition the exercise of an 
existing power. The objection urged, then, properly should be that the law 
of 1885 cannot constitutionally be put in force according to the legislative 
intent, and to sustain that objection it must appear that an attempt to act under 
-the law will, of necessity, induce legislation that will be unconstitutional and 
therefore void, and the argument will be that as for that reason no action under 
the law can be successful, the law is incapable of being performed, and there- 
fore binds not. 

" It is to be observed, however, that the reference to a subsequent Legis- 
lature is couched in terms which manifestly contemplate a lawful exercise of 
the law-making power. The action is to be by ' an act passed for that purpose.' 
The statute attacked, then, contemplates a law to be subsequently made by a 
power equal to that from which it sprang. It cannot dictate the terms of such 
subsequent law. When it prescribed that action should be by law, it sur- 
rendered power over that action. I must assume that the statute questioned 
was enacted in the light of this fundamental principle, for the lawmakers are 
entitled to every presumption in favor of their knowledge and wisdom. 
Cooley Const. Lim. 219. 

" Viewed in this light, the legislative purpose appears to have been, not to 
inaugurate a permanently prohibitory policy concerning leases to foreign cor- 
porations, but to forbid them until they should have legislative sanction. 
Having no power over subsequent legislation, the law could not prescribe that 
that sanction shall be given in special terms, nor does it intend to so prescribe. 
Its purpose is to lead the proceeding for sanction to a point where its power 
must cease and there surrender it. It in effect prescribed that railroad cor- 
porations of this State shall not lease to foreign corporations without the 
sanction of law to be hereafter enacted ; that it is not the policy of the law to 
permanently prohibit such a lease, but it does now prohibit it, and will pro- 
hibit it, until hereafter a law to be enacted shall permit it ; until a future law 
-shall, in the light of the terms desired, prescribe terms under which it may 
be made. 



404 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 



"That such uncontrolled future law need not be special, is too plainly 
apparent to require discussion. 

"The law of 1885, then, is constitutional and is applicable to the lease now 
questioned. And it follows that the lease was made not only without legal 
sanction but in defiance of an expressly prohibitory statute. 

"There has been some disagreement among the cases as to whether an 
injunction will issue at the instance of tlie Attorney-General to restrain every 
excess of corporate power, or whether, before it issues, actual threatened 
injury must be manifest. The argument which sustains the first class of such 
cases is that every excess of corporate power violates the contract with govern- 
ment, and thereby invades public and governmental rights. The law deems 
such invasion to be a public injury. An apt illustration is to be found in 
the case of Thomas v. West Jersey Railroad Company, 101 U. S. 71, where 
there was an unauthorized lease of a railroad. The Suj^reme Court of the 
United States there held that the franchises and powers granted to a railway 
company are designed to be exercised by it for the public good, and this pur- 
pose enters into the consideration for the grant. Any contract, therefore, by 
which the corporation disables itself to perform those duties to the public, or 
attempts to absolve itself from their obligations without the consent of the 
State, is a violation of its contract with the State and tends to the public 
injury. 

"The argument to sustain the other class of cases is that a court of equity 
should not move upon mere legal intendment, but should be satisfied of a real, 
substantial public injury which demands the writ of injunction in the due 
protection of the public. In the use, at least, of a preliminary injunction, 
the latter class of cases appears to be the better founded in fitness and reason, 
for if there be no present emergency to be met, why may not the injunction 
be reserved until final hearing ? 

" But the exhibition of the tendency of the lease in question to public injury 
does not rest alone upon mere legal intendment, and I may here apply the 
rule, with the limitation incorporated in it, that the tendency to public injury 
must in fact appear. 

" There are peculiar features in the transaction now considered that evince 
a public danger much more serious than appears in the mere transfer of cor- 
porate duties to performance by a foreign corporation. The real lessor and 
lessee here are extensive producers and carriers of anthracite coal. They con- 
stitute two of the six great anthracite coal-carriers from the coal regions of 
Pennsylvania to this and adjoining States. It is disclosed that the real lessee 
has secured a lease of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, and that thereby 
and by the lease in question, it controls three of the six great coal-carriers 
referred to, and also that the alliance thus formed now controls, through the 
instrumentality of coal companies, the capital stock of which these combined 
carriers own, more than one-half of all the anthracite coal fields in Pennsyl- 
vania. Moreover, as an indication of the tendency of the combination, the 
Attorney-General presents a report by the lessor defendant to its stockholders, 
in which it congratulates them upon an alliance which, with the co-operation 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 405 



-of other large coal-producing companies, will insure them ' greater uniformity 
in prices of coal,' and the ' avoidance of needless and expensive competition 
fcetween producers.' He urges that, in substance, this report declares the 
reaching out to a monopoly which will work inestimable disaster to the people 
of the State. And as a further evidence that monopoly is in view, he points 
also to an admission by the President of the Philadelphia and Reading Rail- 
road Company that the lease complained of will possibly facilitate the 
co-operation of other coal producers, and in itself, undoubtedly affect prices 
of coal in some localities. 

"The proofs show that there are localities in this State which formerly had 
the advantage of competition between these allied roads, but now are subject 
to the monopoly which this lease aftbrds. 

"It is true co-operation of the remaining coal roads, which is necessary to a 
complete monopoly, has not yet been secured. By this lease only one 
competitor is silenced, and only a little more than one-half of the entire coal 
region is controlled. It is only the second step in the direction of the 
monopoly, the first being the lease of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. It is to 
be remembered, however, that the Attorney-General may have his injunction 
when the ultra vires act tends or is of a nature to produce public injury. 

"But the answers deny that either the Philadelphia and Reading Company 
or the Central Company own any coal lands, or produce or deal in coal. 

" The answers are literally true, but their denials in this respect, without 
explanation, and in the face of the facts adverted to, savor of an evasion which 
disentitles them to that force which is usually accorded to the denials of 
responsive answers upon such a preliminary he&,ring as this. 

" Here, then, we have great coal dealers, complaining that they are not suf- 
ficiently paid for the produce of their mines, combining so that already they 
control more than one-half of the coal fields upon which this State depends 
for fuel, and looking to the co-operation of the remaining anthracite coil-pro- 
ducers to efiect a change in the price of their output so that they may have 
more satisfactory return from their investment. To say that these conditions 
do not tend to a disastrous monopoly in coal, would be an insult to intelligence, 
It is possible that such a monopoly may be used, as the defendants suggest, to 
introduce economies and cheapen coal, but it does violence to our knowledge 
of human nature to expect such a result. 

" The commodity in which these companies deal is a necessary of life in this 
State. It is the principal fuel of its homes and factories. The slightest 
increase in its price is felt by a population of hundreds of thousands of per- 
sons, for their necessity compels them to pay that increase. If once a complete 
monopoly be established by the destruction of competition, whether that be 
through lease or by co-operation, the promoters of it and sharers in it may 
have whatever price their cupidity suggests. The disaster which will follow 
cannot be measured ; it will permeate the entire community— furnaces, forges 
factories and homes — leaving in its trail murmurs of discontent with a govern- 
jnent which will tolerate it, and all the other evil effects of oppression. 



406 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



" Enough has been said to exhibit that the ultra vires act complained of 
portends the greatest danger to the public welfare, and that the case is clearly 
one in which the Attorney-General may, and should, ask the assistance of the 
court. 

" This is a preliminary application heard upon information, answers and ex 
parte proofs. Its object is to do more than to prevent a threatened, irreparable 
injury until the cause can be finally heard, and it should go no further in dis- 
turbance of the existing situation than the effectual prevention of the injury 
apprehended will admit. 

" But the danger is serious. I do not perceive how I can effectually prevent 
it in any other way than by forbidding all operations under the lease and tri' 
partite agreement, and performance of the covenants that those instruments- 
contain. To merely continue the stay that has been granted and leave the 
Philadelphia and Eeading Railroad Company in possession and operation of 
the property and franchises of the Central Company, would be to facilitate and 
invite infraction of the order already made. The devices for disguise which 
have appeared in this case, as attributable to the defendants, admonish me to 
sever, as far as possible, the connection between them until the final hearing. 
I vfill, therefore, continue the present injunction to final hearing, adding to it, 
however, the fuither direction that the defendants and each of them, their 
officers and agents, do desist and refrain from further performing and carrying, 
into effect the lease and tripartite agreement, and that the Port Eeading Rail- 
road Company and the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company do desist 
and refrain from continuing to control the road, property and franchises of the 
Central Railroad Company of »New Jersey, and from further in anywise inter- 
meddling therewith, and that the Central Railroad Company of New Jersey 
do desist and refrain from permitting the Port Reading Railroad Company or 
the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company to use, control or operate its 
road, property and franchises, and that the Central Railroad Company do 
again resume control of all its property and franchises and the performance of 
all its corporate duties.'' 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

How Governor Abbett Started Out to Lead a Hill Delegation 
TO Chicago in 1892 and Ended as the Chosen Orator of 

THE ClEVELANDITES IN THE NATIONAL CONVENTION. 




.OVERNOR ABBETT had an opportunity to test his 
strength with the lieutenants who threatened to over- 
whelm him, when, three months later, preparations 
were made for the holding of the State Convention at 
which the New Jersey delegates to the National Democratic 
Convention for the nomination of the President of the United 
States were to be chosen. Governor Abbett had been a promi- 
nent figure in all the Democratic National Conventions held for 
sixteen years, and he had always managed to have the State 
delegation out of accord with the sentiment of the convention 
to which they were accredited. In 1876, for instance, when 
almost every man who gathered at St. Louis to select the Presi- 
dential nominee was in favor of the nomination of Samuel J. 
Tilden, Governor Abbett as its Chairman perversely held the 
New Jersey delegation for Joel Parker, and cast its vote for the 
New York statesman only when it was too late to be effective. 
The lines upon which Grover Cleveland sought the nomination 
in 1884 did not comport with the Abbett idea of Democratic 
politics and the Governor again held the delegation against the 
overwhelming sentiment of the Democrats of the nation, and 
even after Mr. Cleveland's nomination had been accomplished, 
announced in his first burst of disappointment that it was one 
which the masses of the party could not aiff)prove. There was 
a wide variance between the fundamental ideas underlying the 
Democracy of these two statesmen. Mr. Cleveland's policy, 
foreshadowed by his administration in the Governorship of New 

(407) 



408 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

York, wag rather to secure a proper civil service than to reward 
the workers of the party; Mr. Abbett's theory was that the 
victors were entitled to the spoils of office. The Governor 
repented of his hasty denunciation of the nomination later, and 
like the earnest Democrat that he was, went on the stump for 
Mr. Cleveland before the campaign was over. When the 
National Convention of 1888 was about to assemble, the pre- 
dominant sentiment of the Democracy of the nation again 
favored Mr. Cleveland's nomination. The Governor stood in 
antagonism to him again and gave vent to expressions of indig- 
nation when the convention made the renomination. Mr. 
Cleveland had a warm place in the affections of the people, and 
in spite of the defeat which he suffered at the polls in 1888, he 
was the one man in the nation to whom its Democracy for the 
third time turned for triumph now, in 1892. 

David B. Hill, who succeeded Grover Cleveland as Governor 
of New York, had become inflated with Presidential aspirations, 
and set himself up as Mr. Cleveland's rival in the National 
Convention. Governor Abbett and he were close personal 
friends, and, besides, their Democracy was of the same style. 
They were both exponents of the spoils theory in politics. It 
was an open secret while the Presidential canvass of 1892 was 
taking shape, that Governor Abbett proposed to ally himself 
with the Hill side of the controversy ; and it was even said that 
he had put himself under engagement to deliver a Hill delega- 
tion from New Jersey to the National Convention in Chicago. 
They became close as two peas in a pod in the sympathy of their 
political aims. Mr. Hill was Governor Abbett's frequent com- 
panion on yachting excursions ; Governor Abbett was once the 
guest of honor when Hill was entertained by the New York 
National Guardsmen at their Peekskill camp. And when, in the 
summer of 1891, Governor Abbett presided over his own glit- 
tering camp of militiamen at Sea Girt, he invited his fellow- 
Governor to become the guest of the State. Mr. Abbett must have 
seen from the scant courtesy paid him that Mr. Hill was far from 
being in favor among the New Jersey Democrats as a Presiden- 
tial possibility. No Democrat of his prominence had ever been 



MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 409 

so coldly welcomed by a Democratic multitude. When he was 
driven in state through the grounds, not even the presence of 
Governor Abbett by his side was sufficient to waken an echo of 
applause among the thousands who looked on. He was allowed 
to pass by as silently as if he had been at the head of a funeral 
procession. People seemed to forget that he represented a sister 
State, in their fear of giving countenance to his Presidential 
aspirations. The ardor of their preference for Mr. Cleveland 
made them impatient of attentions extended to the man who 
dared to pose as his rival. 

In spite of this manifestation of popular dissent, Governor 
Abbett went right along with his plans for a convention at 
Trenton that would send a delegation favorable to his guber- 
natorial friend to the National Convention. He seemed to be 
bent upon overpowering the people in their primaries, and upon 
the production at Trenton by his State machine of a convention 
which he could control. Up to the very last moment the project 
seemed likely to succeed. But his lieutenants did not give him as 
cordial a support in carrying it out as he expected to have ; and 
there was, besides, an uprising of the masses that made its con- 
summation impossible. It was a most remarkable demonstration 
of popular power. Even the delegates who had been named 
through his instrumentality for service in the convention were 
captured by their enthusiastic Cleveland neighbors all over the 
State, and to keep themselves in favor were forced to agree to 
aid in the selection of Cleveland delegates. In his own county 
of Hudson the delegates held a preliminary caucus to set the 
pace for delegations from other sections of the State, and on 
motion of ex- Mayor Isaac W. Taussig, one of them, openly 
declared for President Cleveland's renomination. The current 
was so strong a one that his lieutenants could not have stemmed 
it if they had attempted it — and they didn't try. The hand- 
some and portly James Smith, Jr., of Newark, who by this time 
had risen to be one of the most powerful factors in politics, was 
the first to yield to the tide. He had formed a pleasant personal 
acquaintance with ex-Secretary William C. Whitney, one of Mr. 
Cleveland's most intimate friends, and had been flattered by an 




James Smith, Jr. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



411 



invitation to make the journey to the National Convention at 
Chicago in Mr. Whitney's private car. His prominence enabled 
him easily to spring to the front as a leader of the popular move- 
ment, and all of Governor Abbett's big lieutenants fell in line 
behind him. 

The perceptible wavering in his ranks did not phase the Gov- 
ernor a particle. He still hoped through the repressive power 
of his autocracy to put this popular uprising under his heel. 
The convention was called to assemble at Trenton about the 
middle of May. The 
night before the day 
designated for its as- 
sembling, United 
States Senator McPher- 
son dropped into 
Jersey City and was 
urged by his friend Mr. 
Young, the President 
of the First National 
Bank, to attend the 
convention. The Sena- 
tor was known as a 
Cleveland advocate, and 
the proof that Mr. Ab- 
bett had lost control of 
the delegates was af- 
forded in the splendid 
ovation that was given 

to the Senator the moment he reached his rooms in the Trenton 
House. While Governor Abbett was almost entirely neglected by 
the throng, notwithstanding that he kept the Executive Cham- 
ber open to visitors till late into the night, Mr. McPherson's 
room became the Mecca of all the politicians of high and low 
degree. As the night wore on it became certain that it would 
be impossible to pledge the convention the following day against 
Mr. Cleveland, and there was even a disposition to refuse to 




Michael T. Barrett. 



412 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

indulge Governor Abbett's ambition to be sent to the National 
Convention as one of the State's spokesmen. 

There was the usual play for points, during the night, in the 
preliminary organization. The selection of the temporary 
Chairman of the convention rested with the State Committee. 
Governor Abbett's influence was potential there, and he suc- 
ceeded in persuading the choice of Chauncy H. Beasley. 
But the advantage thus gained was of little benefit to him. 
Beasley aroused the suspicions of the delegates almost as 
soon as they assembled in Taylor Hall on the following 
day. Some one sent to Senator Michael T. Barrett, who was 
the Chief Secretary of the convention, for adoption, a motion that 
all resolutions declaring the sense of the convention as to candidate 
or platform be referred without reading to the Committee on 
Resolutions. The purpose of the motion was to smother the 
Cleveland enthusiasm of the delegates, which was apt to find 
expression in resolutions of one kind or another. Beasley had 
the temerity to declare the motion to refer carried without even 
so much as going through the formality of calling for the oppos- 
ing voices, and the delegates fairly howled him off the platform 
in derision ; and when the convention re-assembled for permanent 
organization Senator Edward F. McDonald, of Hudson, took the 
chair in his stead. 

The real struggle of the day was in the secrecy of the Com- 
mittee on Resolutions. The mere selection of the twelve men 
who were to go to the National Convention to represent the 
State was considered as of secondary importance. It did not 
make much difference who were sent if they were instructed as 
to their duty. It was in the Committee on Resolutions that the 
policy as to instructing them was fought out. Allan L. 
McDermott went to the committee-room with resolutions ap- 
plauding Governor Abbett's administration, lauding his veto of 
the Coal Combine bill with especial emphasis, but ominously 
silent as to the greater issue concerning the Presidential succes- 
sion. His smooth and tactical Newark friend, Mr. Smith, put 
this series of deliverances into his pocket, and persuaded the 
committee to substitute for them a resolution instructing the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 413 

delegates to Chicago " to cast the vote of the State for Grover 
Cleveland as long as his name is before the convention." When 
this resolution was offered to the convention for its sanction, 
the delegates could not restrain their enthusiasm till the Secre- 
tary had read it. Wave after wave of applause swept over 
the multitude, wild cheers shook the building, hats were tossed 
aloft, handkerchiefs were waved, and canes cut frantic circles in 
the air. The people had risen against the autocracy, and the 
Governor's machine shivered and shook as though an earthquake 
had passed beneath it. 

To make his humiliation the more acute, the convention named 
Mr. Abbett as one of its messengers to carry this expression of 
its Cleveland enthusiasm to Chicago. The Governor chafed 
against the dispensation. He would not go to Chicago as a 
mere courier. If he could not go as a free agent, to do that 
which he deemed best, he would not go at all. But when the 
time came he joined Mr. Smith, Senator McPherson, Miles 
Ross, Samuel Klotz and the rest of the selected delegation in 
the trip to the West. Mr. Smith was taken into the councils of 
the Cleveland managers as soon as he reached the Windy City, 
selected for important commissions needing tact and urbanity, 
and treated with the most distinguished consideration. Like 
New Jersey, most of the other States had shipped their delega- 
tions to the convention consigned to Grover Cleveland, and it 
was an easy triumph for the ex- President. Anxious to rehabili- 
tate himself with the people of his State, Governor Abbett 
sought to make a conspicuous display of his readiness to serve 
and obey them, and he sought the distinction of making the 
formal presentation of Mr. Cleveland's name to the National 
Convention. Through the sympathetic offices of Mr. Smith this 
privilege was extended to him, and when the time came his 
magnificent oration in Mr. Cleveland's behalf was drowned in 
billows of enthusiastic applause. 




▲Qw L 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



Which Shows How Mr. Wekts, Aftek BEryCr PEBsrArEP bt Gov- 

EKjroK Abbett to Step Off the GrBERSATOKiJo. Path tsro 

A JmciAii Niche, was Peksfadep bt Goveksok 

Abbett to Stef Back Agaet to Becoste 

THE GrOVEiarOK OF THE StATE. 



^\-/l|gOVEKXOK ABBETT returned to his post from Clii- 
^^i^ cago to strengthen his Senatorial lines at the points 
^V*^" where his shrewd eye saw there was serious weakness. 
There was an interregnum ahead during which all of 
the purposes that had inspired his strong personal government 
might be defeated. He had built his machine over the people 
with the design of climbing from it into the United States 
Senate at the expiration of Mr. Bkxlgett's term in 1S93 without 
asking their leave. The joint meeting of the Legislature at 
which Mr. Blodgett's successor was to be chosen was to be held 
on the third Tuesday of January. If he cv.nild have kept at 
the head of his State machine up to the time of the eventful 
meeting, it would have been an easy thing to make it province 
the desireii result. Its possibilities in the way of rewarvls and 
punishments would have enabled him to make the members in 
ioint meeting bend to his will. It was there that the ditiiculty 
lay. He could not stay in command himself. His term as 
Governor would run out two weeks in advance of the joint 
meeting. For the fortnight immaliately preceding joint meet- 
ing, another captain than himself must be at the helm. To 
insure the employment for his beuedt of the great powers which 
he was to hand over to his successor, it was primarily necessary 
that the mau to step into the Governorship after him should be 
of his own selection and in sympathy with his ambitious. Else 
the enormous patronage of the office might be employeil to his 
undoing. 



i 



416 MODERN BA.TTLES OF TRENTON. 

He begaa to guard against the dangerous possibilities of the 
fortnight early in the game. The gubernatorial possibility that 
cast the deepest shadow before was Senator George T. Werts, of 
Morris. There had been a sort of tacit understanding, ever 
since Mr. Werts had by vote and influence helped Senator Mc- 
Pherson to a re-election in 1889, that he was to have Mr. 
McPherson's aid in attaining the nomination for the Governor- 
ship in 1892. Senator Werts had meanwhile forced himself 
into recognition by making a record for himself that brought 
him into prominence. He had linked his name with the Ballot 
Reform law, and had been instrumental in framing a lasting 
revision of the Republican High License and Local Option act. 
Then he had attractive personal qualities that won him friends 
everywhere. Genial, courteous, approachable, entertaining, a 
man of infinite humor, full of quip and jest and anecdote, he 
had those shining social qualities that attract men. 

Governor Abbett looked askance at the Morris man's growing 
boom. He was afraid that there was a trifle too much of inde- 
pendence of character in his make-up to permit him to be as clay 
in his hands during the eventful fortnight, and he sought an 
opportunity to retire him from the public view. The oppor- 
tunity came early in 1892, when Justice Manning M. Knapp 
was stricken with' death, upon his bench, while denouncing one 
of the calloused grand juries of Hudson county for their 
systematic protection of crime. The Governor lost no time in 
tendering the seat in the Supreme Court to this unwelcome 
gubernatorial possibility. Senator Werts hesitated about accept- 
ing, tempting offer though it was. He realized that the accept- 
ance meant the relinquishment of his gubernatorial aspirations, 
and he was reluctant to make the sacrifice. The voice that was 
potent in determining him to assume the proffered distinction 
was that of Mrs. Werts. It was a dignified position, and, be- 
sides being a life place, took him out of the purely political life 
that was distasteful to her ; and in answer to her solicitations he 
finally yielded. In February he resigned his seat in the Senate, 
settled in a handsome mansion on Jersey City Heights that had 
once been the home of ex-Mayor Charles Seidler, and took the 
martyred Knapp's place in the Hudson County Circuit. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 417 

This seemiDg abandonment of his lien on the nomination 
apparently paved the way for the nomination to the Governor- 
ship of Judge Job H. Lippincott, of Hudson county, whose 
splendid services in the pursuit of the ballot-box conspirators 
had won him the admiration of the masses. The gangs that 
ruled the State frowned on him, of course, and loudly boasted 
that they would not permit him to succeed in the convention. 
The discussions concerning his candidacy were kept up with 
much vigor, till Senator McPherson gave new force to the drift 
by an interview made public on the eve of a little run to 
Europe which he had in contemplation. He declared against 
the autocracy and its attendants of ring rule and corruption, and, 
demanding an honest administration of public affairs with a due 
regard to popular rights, suggested that the welfare of the 
Commonwealth would be safe in the event of the nomination of 
either Judge Lippincott or of Edward F. C. Young as Governor 
Abbett's successor. 

Both by the lines of the policy it indicated as that which the 
new administration should pursue, and by the men whom it 
named to carry it out. Senator McPherson's pronunciamento was 
a direct thrust at Mr. Abbett's supremacy. Mr. Abbett's friends 
had long flattered themselves that Mr. McPherson was not ready 
to be overshadowed in the Senate by a man of Abbett's eloquence 
and resource. This move of his was quoted by them as a proof. 
Neither of the gentlemen whom he had named was acceptable 
to the Governor's closest advisers — Lippincott, for the reason 
that he had already placed himself in public antagonism to the 
prevailing misrule, and Young because he had never been 
amenable to Mr. Abbett's influence. 

At that time Mr. Young was the President of the First 
National Bank in Jersey City, and of the Dixon Crucible Com- 
pany, which he had rescued from bankruptcy. He had lived 
for nearly fifty years in Jersey City, and was looked upon as 
the typical business man of the State. He traced his ancestry 
to Rev. John Yonge, of England, who about the middle 
of the seventeenth century migrated to Southold, L. I., 
where his grave has ever been kept green by the succeeding 

27 




Edward F. C. Youi i 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 419 



generations ; but New Jersey had been the home of his ancestors 
far into the past. His father and grandfather had been born in the 
same room in the old homestead in Morris county in which he 
himself first saw the light of day. A rural career was altogether 
too dull and unattractive for a man of his active temperament, and 
so it was that he had moved city- ward. He began his business 
career with the Hudson County Bank, in November, 1852, 
where, six months before, the late Augustus A. Hardenbergh, 
who himself achieved distinction in public life, had taken a 
desk. An offer of the Tellership tempted him twelve years later 
to the First National Bank, which was just then on the eve of 
absorbing the old Mechanics and Traders Bank. He became 
Assistant Cashier in 1865, its Cashier in 1874, and on the death 
of the late Alexander Hamilton Wallis, in 1879, was made its 
President. He knew men at a glance and by his shrewd busi- 
ness management had, when he was summoned to the front in 
this gubernatorial campaign, built the bank into the most impor- 
tant financial institution in the State. His business lines reached 
out in every direction, and through them he had gradually 
grown, almost without observing it himself, to be an influential 
political factor. The lines of politics in Hudson county led as 
unfailingly, as the lines of business, to his ornate little oflSce in 
the bank building. 

He found diversion from his absorbing business activities in 
his political side-plays ; and, a man of method and system, he 
made it possible to give himself occasionally to the public ser- 
vice. He acted away back in the fifties, when Cornelius Van 
Yorst was Mayor of the city, as Collector of Assessments ; and, 
even while attending to his bank duties, he managed to serve as 
City Treasurer from 1865 to 1870; and subsequently, when 
City Comptroller Nelson was disabled by sickness, he officiated 
in his stead, by appointment of the Board of Finance, and paid 
all the salary of the place over to Mr. Nelson's amiable wife 
and daughters. The old Fifth district, the Republican strong- 
hold in the county, complimented him by electing him, though 
a Democrat, first to the City Council and then to the Board of 
Freeholders ; and he was the first Director- at- Large in the his- 



420 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

tory of county affairs. He was New Jersey Director of Rail- 
roads for five years; in 1880 was one of the Electors who cast 
the vote of New Jersey for Winfield S. Hancock for President 
of the United States, and in 1888 represented New Jersey in 
the National Convention that gave Grover Cleveland his second 
nomination for the Presidency. His business and political and 
corporation attachments enabled him to put his hand upon the 
key-board of State politics whenever he desired, and to bring a 
response as often as he touched it. 

Mr. Young had not, however, consented to the use of his 
name till he had consulted with Senator Werts, and it is not 
impossible that he may himself have contributed to the defeat 
he suffered in the convention. He gave assurances to Judge 
Werts that if the Judge proposed to enter the lists he would 
not enter, and that he would place himself in the hands of his 
friends only providing the Judge intended to keep out. Judge 
Werts was still wedded to the Bench, and Mr. Young allowed 
himself to be considered as a candidate. Ex-Congressman Miles 
Ross, acting for himself and Mr. McPherson, had also sought the 
Judge at his house and made their first offers of aid to him if 
he desired the nomination. The Judge had given the same assur- 
ance to them that h,e now gave to Mr. Young, and it was only 
after he had declined the proffered services that Senator Mc- 
Pherson suggested the names of Mr. Young and Judge Lip- 
pincott. 

Senator McPherson made a shrewd stroke in politics when 
he named this important business worker as an alternative 
with Judge Lippincott for the gubernatorial nomination. The 
alliance of the two names was calculated to bring to Mr. Young's 
back all of the independent sentiment Judge Lippincott's record 
had brought into play ; or to Judge Lippincott's back the com- 
pact business support that Mr. Young could command. 

Judge Lippincott was willing to let his candidacy drift. But 
Mr. Young went to work on his fences with an ardor born of a 
determination to win. Mr. McPherson had gone to Europe with 
the promise to return in time to put the finishing touches to his 
fight before the convention. Governor Abbett looked with 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 421 

dismay upon the growing strength of the Jersey City Bank 
President. He had satisfied himself that Mr. Young would be 
everything but a complaisant Governor ; and he called his lieu- 
tenants into council, to consult as to the surest means of flanking 
the advance of this arch enemy of his. They were not all true 
friends who gathered with the Governor at their conferences. 
Some of them with keen remembrance of his race-track and 
coal combine vetoes, were even then plotting for his overthrow. 
Governor Abbett must have suspected their fidelity, but he had 
made his bed with them, and he was now obliged to sleep with 
them or with nobody. But they too had their own reasons for 
opposing Mr. Young, and a common cause against a common 
enemy bound them to an alliance with Abbett. 

Presently there came a voice from South Jersey that Judge 
Werts must be put in nomination, nolen volens. Colonel Price, 
City Comptroller Connelly, and other local followers of James 
Smith, Jr., of Newark, caught up the cry, and it was not long 
before Judge Werts was recognized as the man whose name was 
to be used by the anti- Young men to conjure with. The Judge 
was hunted out and asked point blank what his designs were. 
It was plain from the tenor of his answers that he did not 
desire to be a candidate. Still the battle for him went on and 
he was subjected to endless pressure to reconsider his determina- 
tion. He was warned that he would be held responsible for the 
party defeat that might follow his refusal to accept the nomina- 
tion when it had been tendered to him. His own disposition 
was to defeat this scheme by a plump public announcement of his 
utter unwillingness to serve ; but the Young managers thought 
South Jersey could be better held in hand by the Judge's atti- 
tude of uncertainty, and it was continued. 

Allan McDermott and James Smith, Jr., were not slow to 
quote his failure to make a public declination as an evidence 
that he could be prevailed upon to accept a nomination properly 
tendered to him, and they found their campaign in Werts's 
behalf strengthened by the plea that for once the office was seek- 
ing the man. The battle was waged on both sides with such 
5kill that a day or two before that named for the holding of the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 423 



convention the two factions seemed to divide the Democratic 
strength of the State equally. The turn of a hair was enough 
to determine the rivalry. Senator McPherson was expected to 
turn the hair to Mr. Young's side, and his followers hailed with 
hopeful enthusiasm the announcement, a week before the con- 
vention, that the vessel which was bringing him back to these 
shores to take command of the convention had just been 
" spoken " off Sandy Hook. 

Two communities of newspaper readers saw the announce- 
ment in their journals of the following morning that the fear that 
there might be Asiatic cholera infection on the steamer had led 
the health authorities of New York to forbid the transfer of 
either passengers or baggage from her. One of these communi- 
ties was the fun- loving public who had awaited the arrival of 
Miss Tara-ra-ra-Boom-de-Ya Collins with keen anticipation. 
The other was the throng of Jerseymen who learned with undis- 
guised anxiety that Senator McPherson was among those who had 
been doomed with her to an indefinite imprisonment at Quaran- 
tine. Mr. McPherson's allies hoped that the next day would bring 
news of his release by special, dispensation. But when the next 
day, and the next, and the next went by, and he was still a 
prisoner, they began to lose hope. Richard M. Jordan, brother 
of Comptroller Thomas D. Jordan, of the Equitable Insurance 
Company, in New York, and of ex-United States Treasurer 
Conrad N. Jordan, and a particularly close friend of the 
Senator, is said to have steamed down the Bay in a tug 
and invited the Senator to steal away to shore under cover of 
the night ; but the Senator declined to presume upon his promi- 
nence to run a blockade for which a less conspicuous passenger 
would be hunted. And when it became apparent, a day or two 
before the convention, that the Senator would not be able to 
release himself in time to render to Mr. Young the service he 
hoped to render him, Governor Abbett ran down to the ship's 
side in his steam jacht and "chaifed" him over the ship's 
guards on his discomfiture. 

The convention that Senator McPherson was thus prevented 
from assisting to mould as he hoped was held early in Septem- 



424 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

ber (1892). It proved to be one of the most exciting and 
tumultuous that had ever been witnessed in Trenton. The two 
clans had arrayed themselves — for Young, who was known to be 
willing to accept, and for Werts, who was still protesting that 
he did not want to run. A martial odor pervaded the great 
hall. One could almost hear the war-horses of the contending 
armies snorting for the fray. The State Committee designated 
the mild-mannered ex-Speaker Bergen, of Somerset, to preside. 
A skirmish-line engagement was the outgrowth of the scotched 
anti- Cleveland movement of the Abbett camp. HinchliflPe, who 
had been favorable to Cleveland, and Prosecutor William B. 
Gourley, who had been of the Abbett-Hill forces, led opposing 
delegations from Passaic to the convention. A bitter strife for 
admission to its privileges ensued. The convention knew its 
friendsj and the Gourley contingent secured recognition. That 
was first blood for the Abbett side. It was an earnest that the 
Werts agitators were somewhat in the ascendancy. 

Speaker Bergen had meanwhile given place to Edward F. 
McDonald, who was made the permanent Chairman of the con- 
vention. He was of commanding presence, of stentorian voice, 
and at conventions in Hudson he had been accustomed to face 
turbulent throngs such as that now before him. But it needed 
all his power of lung to make himself heard above the ceaseless 
tumult of this gathering, and all of his splendid tact as a pre- 
siding officer to keep the roaring and shouting and snarling 
crowd in check. When he found himself unequal to the task 
he invoked the aid of the band in the gallery, and drowned out 
the noise to the tune of Yankee Doodle. Hudson, which was 
solid for Young, and Essex, equally solid for Werts, lowered at 
each other from their benches, and each met the others' cheers 
with hisses as if a nest of serpents had been aroused to wra*^h. 
Atlantic and Bergen waived the formal presentation of their 
choice. When they explained that they deferred to Prosecutor 
Winfield, the Hudson delegates, led by a young son of ex- Gov- 
ernor Bedle and aided by the smooth-tongued Senator Edwards, 
broke into a pandemonium of derisive yells. The Werts work- 
ers had asked Mr. Winfield to make the nominating speech for 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 425 

the Judge. When the campaign was young Mr. Winfield had 
been indifferent as to his preference. But he had finally decided 
'to espouse the nomination of Judge Werts. When he sought 
election as one of the Hudson delegates to the convention, the 
whole power of the machine had been turned upon him, and he 
was defeated. He was present in convention now only as a 
proxy for some elected man who had given him his credentials. 

When at the proper moment he rose from his seat among the 
Hudson delegates to make the speech for Werts he had gone 
there to make, the throng that surrounded him fought like tigers 
to keep him off the floor. Delegations from other parts of the 
State shouted to him to take the platform, and he had to fight 
every inch of his way out of the Hudson benches. As he was 
lifted to the platform from the orchestra pit, on the shoulders 
of sympathetic delegates, he shook his lion-like mane in angry 
defiance of the crowd from which he had just escaped, and roared 
with keen sarcasm that the scene through which he had just 
passed reminded him of the fight of St. Paul with the beasts at 
Ephesus. 

" I do not pretend to be St. Paul," he exclaimed by way of 
emphasizing the intimation that the crowd that had tried to battle 
him into silence were beasts, and then he launched out into a 
brilliant eulogy of Judge Werts that kept the air vocal with 
applause and hisses. When he had finished, Edwards made a 
hot personal attack upon him, and denounced him as having 
favored Young till he had learned that Young would not purchase 
his support by a promise of re- appointment to the Prosecutor- 
ship. When, Hudson being reached. Senator Daly, of that 
county, sprang to the platform to put Mr. Young's name before 
the convention, it was the other side's turn to indulge in a Babel 
of yells and groans. In one of the lulls, the courtly Paul 
Revere, of Morristown, managed to get in ex- Congressman A. W. 
Cutler's name, and in another W. Holt Apgar, a young Trenton 
lawyer, found it possible to edge in the name of Gen. Richard 
A. Donnelly. President Adrain injected an element of opera 
bouffe into the tumult, by making a railing and sarcastic ad- 



426 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

dress, in which he handled the Essex men, particularly, in a 
manner peculiarly his own. 

The roll-call finally taken showed an almost equal division 
of the votes between the two sides ; but the advocates of Judge 
Werts were a trifle in the lead, and amid a closing uproar Mr. 
McDonald declared him to be the nominee of the party. This 
though there had been as yet no intimation that the Judge 
would accept ; and for several days after the convention had 
dissolved Senator Werts's complacence was still in question. 
When the committee of notification visited him, upon his invita- 
tion, at his home on Jersey City Heights, it was even yet a ques- 
tion as to what course he intended to pursue. Mrs. Werts had 
prepared a beautiful little mid- day lunch for the expected visit- 
ors, and upon being notified of the action of the convention 
Senator Werts read a letter, in which he declared his readiness 
to stand, but at the same time exhibited his want of sympathy 
with the system of government that had of late years prevailed 
in the State. The letter itself was an exquisite piece of literary 
work, and showed the new candidate to be unusually skilled 
as a writer. Its tone was marked by an independence and 
animated by a spirit of reform that went far to commend him 
to the people who hoped for better things under the new admin- 
istration than they had been forced to suffer under the expiring 
one. 

Like Mr. Young, Senator Werts came from an ancient family 
that had lived for generations in Morris county. The late 
Attorney- General Vanatta, in whose office he had studied law at 
Morristown, was his mother's brother, and he had shown his 
personal strength in repeated canvasses for the Mayoralty of 
Morristown, carrying it as a Democratic candidate by handsome 
majorities in spite of its deep-dyed Republicanism; and though 
Morris county itself was wedded to Republicanism, he had twice 
sat as her representative in the State Senate. 

The Republicans had no such time in selecting their candidate. 
One-armed General Henry M. Nevius, of Monmouth, presided 
at their convention. There was a rivalry between Frank A. 
Magowan, of Mercer, whose election to the Mayoralty of the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 427 

Democratic city of Trenton had made him a restive candidate 
for gubernatorial honors ; Gen. Grubb, who set up the plea that 
his selection was a logical sequence of the ballot-box frauds of 
1889 ; Franklin Murphy, a rich varnish-maker of Newark, who 
had once served in the Legislature, and ex- Congressman John 
Kean, Jr., who had been persuaded to step out of General 
Grubb's way in 1889, on the understanding that the nomination 
of this year should fall to him. Mr. Kean was a man of enor- 
mous wealth, a pleasant and agreeable companion, and a sleek 
politician who had won his spurs in several notable congres- 
sional campaigns. 

He came of a family that was connected with some of the 
most notable in society and public aiFairs. Hamilton Fish, Sec- 
retary of State under President Grant, was of his kindred, and 
the Livingstones, of Revolutionary memory, were among his 
ancestors. The substantial homestead in Elizabeth, in which 
he consulted with his political lieutenants, was an heirloom from 
his noted Revolutionary predecessors. His father was born in 
it. He had first seen the light of day iu it himself, and neither 
had ever made his home anywhere else. Besides being of this 
line of old grandees and to the manor born, he had proven 
his political skill in contests for Kepre^entative in Congress from 
the district in which this ancient estate of his family lay. The 
district was Democratic. But that had not stood in the way of 
his winning the seat against even that veteran among Democratic 
campaigners. Miles Ross, as the result of his first engagement. 
He was then but twenty-eight years of age, and among the 
youngest men who had ever sat in Congress. Robert S. Green 
ran against him when he sought re election in 1884. It was a 
Democratic tidal- wave year, the one in which Grover Cleveland 
was chosen to live in the White House, and Kean went the way 
of all things Republican. Two years later he girded his loins 
for the fray again, and easily vanquished McMahon, whom the 
Democrats set up against him. The second subsequent year, 
when he asked his people for a renewal of his term was Presi- 
dential year again, and he went down beneath the Democratic 
wave that swept over the State. 




John Kean, Jr. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 429 

There was enough in this record to convince the Republicans 
that he was a shrewd and successful campaigner, with positive 
elements of strength ; and the delegates to the State Convention 
threw Grubb aside, discarded Magowan, slighted Murphy, and 
placed its battle- flag in Mr. Kean's hands to be planted on the 
ramparts of victory. 

The battle that followed the completion of the tickets was a 
notable political engagement. Mr. Kean, in his tireless quest of 
votes, found the people in a state of revolt against the abuses of 
their trusts of which the Democratic State and local managers 
had been guilty. Governor Abbett's seizure of all the State 
prerogatives, his appointment of discredited men to the public 
places, the control of the cities by gangs, the crimes of the 
ballot-box stuffers, the open defiance of law by the race-track 
managers at Guttenberg and Gloucester City, the sale of legis- 
lation, under cover of a party service, to the coal combine ; the 
character, or the want of it, of the men who made up the sub- 
servient Legislatures ; the concessions of the Democratic leaders 
to the liquor element ; the official recognition of such men as 
" Bob " Davis, in Hudson, and Thompson, in Camden, and the 
scheme of popular disfranchisement embraced in the gerry- 
mander of 1891 ; the multiplication of sinecures, the inexcusable 
increases of salaries, rumors of scandals and corruption on 
every hand, had determined the people to drive the whole 
wicked crew that masqueraded in the garb of Democracy from 
power. The first blow in that direction had indeed already 
been struck in Jersey City. That nest of official vice had 
in the charter election in the spring been handed over to the 
control of Mayor Wanser and the Republicans, though the 
Democrats had tried to shield themselves from the attack behind 
the name of Allan L. McDermott. The canvass had been 
marked by a great revival of interest in local afiairs. Mr. Mc- 
Dermott in his addresses boldly denounced the Cleveland ring 
that had plundered the city right and left, in the hope of 
escaping the odium that those conscienceless manipulators had 
brought upon the party, but he was made the vicarious sacrifice 
for the sins of that discredited regime. Every meeting he held 



430 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

was a crush. The crowds listened to him — and went oflP to vote 
against him. The capture of that Democratic stronghold was 
an augur of a sweeping Republican victory throughout the State 
in the fall, and Mr. Kean went to the head of the Republican 
columns with an assurance of triumph few Republican leaders 
had dared to nurse. 

And the assurance would have been handsomely redeemed by 
the gubernatorial vote but for the conspicuously shrewd work 
of the Democratic State Committee, under the leadership of 
Chairman McDermott, in tying the State campaign up with the 
national campaign in such a way that they seemed to be insep- 
arable. 

With the other Democratic chieftains Mr. McDermott saw that 
the Democracy was divided against itself, but that the spirit of the 
May convention was abroad in the State ; that the masses were 
even more eager to assist Mr. Cleveland to the Presidency of the 
nation than they were to punish their home oppressors ; and he 
skillfully parried the Republican State Committee's State issue 
campaign with an equally aggressive campaign on national 
issues. He had never been over- enamored of Mr. Cleveland, 
but he saw how warmly the people were wedded to this national 
idol of theirs. It was a foregone conclusion that no amount of 
disaffection on State questions could take the State from the 
national Democratic candidate, and if Judge Werts's canvass 
could be linked with his, the battle for the State offices might be 
won with that for the Electoral College. It was one of the 
shrewdest of McDermott's many shrewd strokes of politics to 
plan to have Mr. Cleveland visit New Jersey to stand as sponsor 
to the people for Mr. Werts. 

It was not an easy thing to achieve. Democratic presidential 
candidates, counting New Jersey as one of the never-failing 
Democratic States, are not in the habit of spending any of their 
time upon her. Senator McPherson was disposed to believe 
that a visit by Mr. Cleveland would be interpreted as a sign 
that he feared that even New Jersey was in danger, and, because 
the effect upon the vote in other States would be disastrous, he 
was of the view that the National Committee should ad- 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 431 

vise him not to yield to Mr. McDermott's solicitations. The 
portly State Committee Chairman persisted, however, and found 
a fresh argument in the visit Mr. Whitelaw Reid, the Republican 
Vice Presidential candidate, had paid to Jersey City in the midst 
of the campaign. McDermott's constant importunities pre- 
vailed at last, and Mr. Cleveland arranged to go to Jersey City 
towards the close of the campaign. He was announced as the 
guest of Governor Werts, and Senator McPherson rode in the 
ooach with him to chaperone him. Monster receptions were 
held in the brownstone club house of the aristocratic Hudson 
Democratic Society and under the four-acre shed of the Oakland 
Rink. No man ever received such an ovation as was paid to 
the distinguished visitor. Torchlight processions turned the 
night into day. The houses were illuminated from cellar to 
garret. There were music and flags all around. Admiring and 
cheering throngs made the streets impassable. The incoming 
trains were crowded with the flower of the citizenship of the 
State, and before he was led to his carriage to return to New 
York he made a little speech, of course, and in the little speech 
he managed to drop a cheerful word for the pleasant- faced gen- 
tleman at his elbow, the Democratic candidate for Governor. 

The State campaign caught the luster of that demonstration. 
People could find no excuse for Mr. Cleveland's advent among 
them unless it had been for the purpose of aiding Judge Werts, 
and it began to be reasoned that the man for whom one of Mr. 
Cleveland's distinction would do so much must be worthy of 
their suffrages. The brightened aspect of the Democratic cam- 
paign was the direct result of that visit, and Mr. Cleveland had 
scarcely gotten back to his hotel in New York before the clouds 
that hung over the State canvass were seen to be drifting away. 

At the end of the campaign Mr. McDermott made his master- 
stroke in Judge Werts's behalf by a signal use of the sentiment 
of admiration for Mr. Cleveland that had so unmistakably 
manifested itself. The opportunity came to him accidentally. 
The practical campaign work of the Republicans was done in 
the capacious parlors of the Federal Club House, a few hundred 
feet distant from Mr. McDermott's residence, on Jersey City 



432 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Heights. A picturesque rumor says that one night while he 
was sitting in his study he noticed a great throng of unusually 
active men in the club-house, and that by the use of his field- 
glass he discovered that they were pasting thousands and thou- 
sands of ballots and preparing them for distribution. Further 
inquiry showed him that the Republican managers had prepared 
these ballots for special distribution among the Cleveland voters 
in the State. They knew that there was no hope of inducing 
the voters to vote for the Republican candidate for President ; 
but they were also convinced that the mass of the suffragists 
were prepared to strike down the rest of the Democratic ticket. 
And they had been busy, on the evening Mr. McDermott looked 
in upon them with his field- glass, covering the names of the 
Republican electors on their ballots with pasters bearing the 
names of the Cleveland electors, but still leaving the names of 
their candidates for State offices intact ; and two days before 
election they had these ballots in the hands of every voter in 
the State. 

The morning before election Mr. McDermott published an 
address to the Democratic voters of the State, cautioning them 
against the use of these ballots. He backed up his claim that 
they might be defective and a violation of the Ballot Reform 
law, which seemed not to contemplate the use of blanket pasters 
but only the pasting of each objectionable name singly, with an 
opinion of ex- Governor Bedle, and cautioned the Cleveland 
voters of the State that if they used the ballots the Republicans 
had prepared for them they ran the chance of throwing away 
their votes and imperiling Cleveland's majority in the State. 
The effect of this warning was simply electrical. The Cleveland 
devotees were not disposed to take any chance of error in their 
battle for Cleveland, and practically none of these half-and-half 
ballots were used by them. To be safe rather than sorry they 
swallowed their indignation against their State rulers and in 
their eagerness to serve their National candidate used only the 
straight Democratic ticket. 

The vote was taken amid considerable excitement. The 
count of the ballot showed that President Cleveland's visit to 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 433 

the State, supplemented by Chairman McDermott's skillful 
stroke at the close of the campaign, had saved the State to the 
Democrats, and that Judge Werts had the lead over the smiling 
ex-Congressman from the Third district. Mr. Cleveland swept 
the State by a mf^jority of about 14,000; Judge Werts c&rried 
it by a majority of about 7,000. It was noticeable that in the 
communities that had felt the oppression of the Abbett rule 
most severely, Mr. Werts's lead was reduced — as, for instance, 
Essex, which Cleveland carried for the Democratic National 
ticket and Kean carried for the Republican State ticket. 

28 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

Which Explains Why the Courtly James Smith, Jr., of Essex, 

Vowing He'd Ne'er Consent, Consented to be United 

States Senator in Governor Abbett's Stead.. 




HE lines for the coming battle for the Senatorship were 
now all laid down. Judge Werts's election to the 
Governorship pointed out the man who was to domi- 
nate the autocracy during that eventful fortnight for 
which Abbett would have to surrender it before he could achieve 
the object for which he had created it. The pregnant inquiry 
on all hands was whether the new Governor would wield the 
great prerogatives that were to come to his hands for the pro- 
motion of Mr. Abbett's interests. The new Governor's friends 
and enemies never lost an opportunity to sound him as to his 
preference, but he met all their inquiries mutely until, in the 
small hours of a banqueting night at Taylor's Hotel, in Jersey 
City, a few weeks after his election, he hailed Governor Abbett, 
who sat at his elbow, as the next United States Senator from 
New Jersey. It was immediately guessed that the autocracy 
was to be conducted on the Abbett lines right up to the hour 
for the assembling of the joint meeting that was to elect the new 
Senator, and Mr. Abbett's friends were confident that he could 
not be beaten in this fight. 

Why shouldn't he win ? Who was there against him ? If 
he were not to be the choice of the caucus, where was there a 
man in sight who would be taken in his stead ? Off in the dis- 
tance was the sleek and portly figure of James Smith, Jr. 
Some people had been insisting that perhaps he might be the 
successful competitor. Abbett and his cabinet scouted the sug- 
gestion. They insisted that Mr. Smith had sworn eternal friend- 
ship for Leon Abbett with his hand uplifted. Mr. Abbett him- 
(434) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 435 

self said that he could not believe that this rising figure in the 
politics of the State and nation would williogly stand in his 
way. While the controversy was going on the chubby- faced 
Essex potentate took a little trip South for his health. James 
F. Connelly and some other followers and adherents of his 
seized upon the opportunity to take the canvass out of his 
hands and to make him a rival of the Governor's whether he 
wanted to be or not. Miles Ross, smarting under the veto of 
the Coal Combine bill, sent word that if he would enter the 
lists Middlesex and Monmouth and Somerset would join his 
Essex followers. Thompson, of Camden, remembering Mr. 
Abbett's veto of the race- track measures, volunteered to turn 
the South Jersey Democrats into the column. Cleveland men 
everywhere, with a lively gratitude for the assistance Mr. Smith 
had lent them in taking the control of the May convention out 
of Mr. Abbett's hands, and pleased by the favor with which he 
had been received by the Cleveland managers at Chicago, threw 
up their hats and declared that no other man than Smith would 
meet the demands of the hour. The object of all this adulation 
was hunted through Southern forests and marshes to learn if he 
would not be persuaded to accept the universal homage of the 
people and become a candidate. He said " No " less firmly than 
he had been wont to say it. It was a flattering demonstration 
of popular desire that he could not toss aside. He was a man 
of the people whose tactical concessions to popular movements 
had given him the strength which he held in the party's councils. 
How could he say " No " to this new manifestation of popular 
desire ? How, indeed ? He couldn't. But he didn't say 
" Yes." 

Then there was a long pause of doubt and uncertainty pending 
his return to his home in Newark. His friends were hopeful 
that he might be persuaded. Abbett's cabinet began to fear 
that he might yield. Quite as much as over the uncertainty of 
his attitude were they aroused over complications encountered at 
the vital point in their campaign. No senatorial candidate 
could hope to win the favor of the joint caucus unless he were 
warmly supported by the delegation from his own county. Mr. 



436 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Abbett's friends tried to whip the Assemblyman from Hudson 
into a local caucus for the purpose of having them declare their 
readiness to support him in the joint meeting. They were dis- 
couraged when they found it impossible. Mr. Edward F. C. 
Young was busy among the members working his revenge for 
Abbett's movements against him in the Gubernatorial Conven- 
tion. Mr. Young had but to hold his hand up to make the Hud- 
son delegation go where he willed. He kept them at bay and 
apart and divided, until Mr. Smith returned to his mansion on 
Washington Place, Newark. The day after he had arrived Mr. 
Young tapped the doorbell and was shown at once to Mr. Smith's 
reception-room, and there these two antagonists of yesterday 
laid the plans for the final blow to Governor Abbett's cherished 
ambition. Mr. Young assured Mr. Smith that he would never 
permit the Hudson delegation to support Abbett, and Mr. Smith 
was politician enough to see that without such support Abbett'a 
fight was hopeless. As long as there was a chance for the 
Governor securing the coveted prize, he had pledged himself not 
to stand in his way ; but if the Governor were driven out of 
the field by forces which Mr. Smith had not created nor could 
control, why should not Mr. Smith permit the scattered forces to 
rally around him ? The hesitating " no " became " yes," now, 
and when Mr. Young left the house he had Mr. Smith's assur- 
ance that Mr. Young and all who were disposed to might con- 
sider him as a senatorial possibility. 

Before the time the Legislature was ready to assemble it wa& 
evident that the formal action of a party caucus was not neces- 
sary to make the name of the new Senator known. Governor 
Abbett's lieutenants had leagued to defeat him with the pleasant- 
faced Newark statesman. When the caucus was called, Allan 
McDermott, the truest of Abbett's friends, saw certain defeat 
ahead, and he sought the Governor for consultation. The dis- 
appointed man was white and haggard with despair. But his 
jaw was firmly set, and he would listen to no talk of withdrawal. 

" I'll not withdraw," he said doggedly between his set teeth 
to McDermott, " but you can do as you please." 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 437 

" Then," the loyal young lieutenant responded, " I'll take the 
responsibility of withdrawing your name myself." 

The old guard — a little handful of the faithful — was hastened 
to the Governor's room, and there McDermott made confession 
to them of the hopelessness of their struggle, and absolved them 
from their allegiance. Mr. Smith was called from a near room, 
and a formal speech of surrender was made by McDermott. 
The coming man smiled beneficently, expressed his gratification 
at the new accessions to his ranks, thanked the little throng for 
their support and preference and bowed them out. 

Thus the work of the caucus was made easy, and less than 
half an hour after the doors of the big new Assembly Chamber 
— the Chamber which Mr. Abbett had planned and built for 
the State — had closed on the conferees, a little whisper crept 
through the corridors of the State House that Mr. Smith had 
been named to be Senator Blodgett's successor. Two days later, 
the two Houses voted separately. Senator Barrett, of Essex, 
presented Mr. Smith's name to the Senate ; Lane, of Union, 
presented it to the Assembly. Each branch gave him a majority 
over General Sewell, who had been accorded the empty honor 
of the Republican caucus nomination ; and two days later the 
Houses assembled in joint meeting to read their respective 
journal and to hear President Kobert Adrain formally declare 
Mr. Smith New Jersey's new representative in the United States 
Senate for the six years commencing March 4th, 1893. 

The career of the phenomenally-successful man who slid so 
smoothly into this commanding position has been traced in a 
measure already. He had come from a public- spirited family 
in Newark. His father, still alive to see his son advanced to 
his great distinction, had been himself a prosperous business 
man, and in his earlier years a member of Assembly. The 
new Senator had accumulated a fortune in the manufacture of 
leather at Newark. Brown-eyed and rosy-cheeked, with a round, 
smiling, boy-like face, and yet of commanding presence, tall and 
portly, smooth of tongue, non- combative and yielding, of capti- 
vating address and consummate tact in dealing with men, he 
easily made himself popular when he set out to indulge his bent 



438 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

for public affaire. While a member of the Newark Council, h& 
was marked as one head and shoulders among his fellow-mem- 
bers, and they saw instinctively that he was on the sure way to 
higher honors. He was one of the pillars of the Catholic 
Church, on terms of personal intimacy with the chiefs in the 
Diocese, and a liberal giver to every charity. When he turned 
his eyes towards politics, he went deeply into his purse for 
campaign expenses and grew apace in prominence and influence* 
He had become so conspicuous a figure in local politics that 
when only the presentation of its most acceptable men could 
save his party from threatened defeat, he was importuned to 
accept the Mayoralty of Newark ; but he was too busy a man ta 
assume the duties of the position, and he was forced to decline. 

His recognized influence in Essex county politics had pointed 
him out to Governor Abbett, when he was building up hi& 
autocracy, as an efficient aid, and he made him one of the pillars 
of the temple. His smooth and insinuating address easily 
enabled him to take front rank among the chiefs of State ta 
whose councils he was thus called, and he was soon recognized 
everywhere as one of the greater figures in the larger field of 
activity to which he had been summoned. When he reached 
the Senate, he at once commanded the attention of the nation^ 
by his attitude on the pending Tariff bill, and within a year 
had made his name as well known throughout the land as that 
of any of the veterans of politics who sat with him. 

Governor Abbett's career was practically ended with this second 
defeat of his lifelong ambition. Judge Werts's accession to the 
Governorship had made a vacancy on the Supreme Court Bench ; 
in filling it he gracefully yielded to popular desire by naming 
Judge Job H. Lippincoit. It was the reward of the Judge's 
splendid services for the State in connection with the ballot-box 
prosecutions. A few weeks later Supreme Court Judge Edward 
W. Scudder died at his home in Trenton. Mr. Abbett was 
quite willing that the Governor should name him for this unex- 
pected vacancy. Mr. Abbett's implacable foes were disposed to 
deprive him of the small recognition, but the nomination was 
eventually made and confirmed. The ex-Governor developed 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 439 

admirable traits as a Judge. Tireless as ever in the discharge of 
his public duties, and keen, able and informed, he made a new 
name for himself on the Bench. His new honors were not, 
however, of long duration. An incurable disease had been sap- 
ping his health for years, and one day towards the close of 1894 
the State was startled by the announcement of his serious illness 
at his home on Jersey avenue, in Jersey City. The anxious 
friends who rushed to make an offer of their services a day or 
two later were met at the door with the sad information that he 
had passed away. 

Two months earlier, the body of his old-time rival, Governor 
Bedle, had been borne to its grave from the handsome home on 
the opposite corner. The two Governors had been neighbors 
during all their active careers, and friends, though their lives 
had led them into warring factional camps. For years they 
lived in adjoining houses in old Sussex Place. The decay of the 
neighborhood prompted Bedle to move ; but Abbett, who was 
posing as the friend of the workingmen at the time, had kept 
open house there till his second accession to the Governorship. 
Mr. Bedle had purchased the old Jewell homestead, on one of 
the Jersey avenue corners of Montgomery street. When Mr, 
Abbett moved it was to the brown-stone front on the opposite 
corner. And there they lived, vis a vis, till a chronic dis- 
order forced Bedle to the operating table two months before 
Governor Abbett's death, and he succumbed to the shock of the 
knife. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

Which Tells the Story of the Raid of the Jockeys Upon the 

State Government, and of What They Did With it 

When They Had Captured it. 



Ip HOSE who realized the strength of the Democratic cur- 
rent set in motion in 1892 by the popular devotion to 
the candidacy of President Cleveland were not sur- 
prised at the character of the men who drifted into the 
State offices on the tide. Everything that was uncanny in Demo- 
cratic politics had been tossed to the bosom of the flood, and the 
legislative salvage of the sweeping tide was as unsavory as it 
could be. The gangs that controlled cities, the upstart bosses who 
ruled counties, the public plotters, schemers and corruptionists, 
had seen their opportunity, and launched their confederates and 
henchmen and fellow-conspirators on the stream with the assur- 
ance that the drift would safely bear them to port. Goldsmith's 
village pedant could not more accurately " times and tides pre- 
sage" than did these shrewd calculators the time and tide the 
favoring campaign of 1892 turned to their advantage. Almost 
every Democrat who floated to a seat in either House of the 
Legislature in 1893 represented a ring, or one of the disrepu- 
table bosses, or a j -A>, or had been tempted to his candidacy by 
the hope of illegitimate gain. Thompson, the owner of the 
ill- flavored race-track at Gloucester City, came up from Camden 
to sit in one of the Assembly chairs ; Dr. Henry, who came 
with him as a colleague, was his ally. Harrigan, Clarke, Byrne, 
Olvaney, Kearns, among the Essex spokesmen, were the legisla- 
tive outposts for the Haynes Municipal Ring in Essex ; Kelly, 
Ditmar, " Teddy " Carroll, Lawless, Dr. Stout, Coyle, Tahen 
and Zeller, of Hudson, owed their seats to the favor of the 
Jballot-box stuffing machine in Hudson. Carroll was a gambler's 
(440) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



441 



book-maker on the Gloucester track, and drew a salary beside 
as an official in the Ring city government in Jersey City. 
Lanning, of Mercer, was a contractor favored by the State Ring. 
Beekman, Daly and Warne, of Middlesex, and Strahan and 
Honce, of Monmouth, had been tarred by the coal combine vote. 
Smith, of Passaic, was another of the coal combine supporters ; 
his Passaic colleague, FJynn, was the "starter" at $100 per day 
•on Thompson's race- course. Kelly, of Union, was the distinct 
product of the 
gang that held 
the city of Eliz- 
abeth by the 
throat. 

Thus every- 
thing that was 
venal or corrupt 
or offensive in 
the manage- 
ment of public 
a ff'a i r s was 
largely reflected 
in the Legisla- 
ture; and the 
lawless ground- 
lings who had 
succeeded in 
securing the 
ascendancy in 
State and 
county and city, 
f o u n d license 

for fresh excesses. It was typical of the whole sitting that 
Flynn wa^ made the Speaker of the Assembly, and the sound 
of his falling gavel sent a tremor of alarm throughout the State. 
And when Adrain was re elected to the Presidency of the Sen- 
ate, it was argued from his activity in forcing the passage of the 
coal combine bill that the Senate was to be the fit complement 
of the Assembly in its legislative excesses. 




Thomas Flynn. 



442 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

The session began with an extravagance in the employment of 
a needless retinue of attendants, that showed its trend. Half a 
score of doorkeepers were assigned to the care of each door in 
the Assembly Chamber. There were more pages than members. 
The desks of the Clerks of both Houses were hidden beneath a 
pile of bills creating sinecures, increasing salaries, prolonging 
tenures, changing governments, ousting incumbents that refused 
to bend the knee to the gangs, opening the doors of the munici- 
pal and county and State treasuries to the invading vandals — 
helping along, in every conceivable way, the unholy invasion of 
private rights for which the control of the public places afforded 
opportunity. It is neither the purpose nor possible in a work 
of the scope of this to enter upon the detailed description of 
their saturnalia. It would involve an exposition of local affairs 
which have no necessary connection with the State's history 
except in their general effect. It must suffice to say generally 
that no private right that could be stolen, nor any public pre- 
rogative that had been overlooked by preceding legislation in 
the interest of the shameless rulers, was left unattacked. 

But there was an incident of this legislative session that gave 
a deaided drift to public sentiment and in the end changed the 
whole current of State history. The aggressive race-track 
element had been restive ever since Governor Abbett had refused 
to yield to it in 1890. It had made a second attempt to secure 
favorable legislation, and had secured the introduction of an act 
that put the State into partnership with the " bookies " by 
enacting that she should have half the gate moneys for licensing 
the race- tracks. But it had been defeated by just such a demon- 
stration as that which had urged Governor Abbett to his veto 
of two years before. Rev. Dr. Kempshall did not lead it this 
time, because he was in Europe. Lawyer Richard Y. Linda- 
bury, of Elizabeth, marshaled the protesting army, however, 
with equal skill and led a memorable gathering into the Assem- 
bly which had the act in its keeping. With the throng was a 
delegation of thirty ladies, to whom the Committee of the Whole- 
listened. Mrs. Knowles, wife of Rev. Dr. Knowles, of Eliz- 
abeth, wa? the noted one in the galaxy of opposition orators^ 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 443 

Her speech in behalf of the women of the State won a wide 
reputation for her. When the members had heard her and the 
others, they decided to let the bill go no farther, and it was 
never heard of afterwards. 

Meanwhile, however, the State was being treated to the spec- 
tacle of the race- tracks at Guttenberg and Gloucester kept 
open the year around in defiance of law. Their audacity and 
the fabulous magnitude of their earnings had turned the eyes of 
the jockeys of the East upon New Jersey, and they came to 
regard her as their Eldorado. It was said that an abandoned 
pacing stretch at Clifton, in Passaic county, was also preparing 
to re-open under the protection of a grand jury. Tracks were 
laid out at Linden and Elizibeth, in Union county; and Mon- 
mouth Park impatiently saw her gates closed by the law to her 
brilliant July throng of patrons, while less showy gambling 
courses coined money in defiance of the law for their more 
reckless proprietors. 

Monmouth's failure to "run off" her usual events in 1892: 
had given the people of the surrounding country an object 
lesson as to the financial and business value of race- courses,, 
which was reflected in a perceptible popular sentiment in favor 
of permissive legislation. The great seaside resorts about had 
been robbed of their crowds and their midsummer gaiety. 
Long Branch, where the effect was most notable, was like a ban- 
quet hall deserted. Her big caravansaries, centers of gaiety,, 
activity and color, the year before, were empty. Hackmen,, 
farmers, traders, among whom the gaudy throng had thrown their 
money with lavish hand, were disheartened. It was to meet 
this local sentiment for permissive legislation that Parker, of 
Monmouth, had in 1891 introduced the bills that Governor 
Abbett had defeated with his veto. The Gloucester and Gutten- 
berg sports had not been deeply interested in the success of the 
relieving legislation at that time. One was protected by a Judge 
who would not punish ; the other by a grand j ury that would 
not indict. It was even intimated that Guttenberg was not 
averse to having this particular form of gambling denied the 
countenance of the law. To legalize racing was to open other 



444 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

tracks and to destroy the audacious monopoly out of which its 
managers had so long been growing rich. 

But the pictures of these two lawless resorts at Gloucester and 
Guttenberg in full swing, while grass grew rank upon the turf 
in front of the noble grand stand at Monmouth, ma^e a con- 
trast that chafed and inflimed the better sentiment of the State. 
The conviction of the ballot-box stuffers, upon whose work had 
rested the title of the Sheriff who drew favoring grand juries 
in Hudson county, and the defeat of the Democratic Mayor in 
Jersey City by a Republican, were signs of peril to which these 
defiers of the law could not close their eyes. The attacks made 
by law-abiding citizens upon the resorts were daily growing 
more determined and more aggressive. Rev. John L. Scudder, 
& public- spirited Congregational minister of Jersey City, headed 
a crusade upon Guttenberg so damaging and effective, and 
Thompson, of the Gloucester course, was haled for punishment 
before the Camden courts so often, that both felt it necessary to 
join hands with other race-track managers to secure legislative 
protection. They had all bent their energies in the campaign of 
1892 to the choice of complaisant men to the Legislature of 
1893, with that end in view; and a horsey flavor was percepti- 
ble in the State House the moment the two Houses assembled 
for the business of the winter. 

The election to the House Speakership of Starter Flynn, of 
the Gloucester race-track, was the first step in the game. The 
session had progressed some weeks before the next was taken. 
Then it was Parker, of Monmouth, who stepped into the breach 
again, this time with three companion Assembly acts, which en- 
abled the authorities of a county or a town to license a race-track 
within its limits, which took a course where bets were made out 
of the category of disorderly houses, in which a ruling of Judge 
Dixon had placed it, and which visited violations of the gambling 
laws of the State with trifling and inconsiderable fines. Sin- 
gularly enough the presentation of these bills did not arouse the 
storm of excitement that even the promoters of the bills them- 
selves expected to see sweep the State. Only a little handful of 
^^alots ran off to the State House to make protest against their 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 44& 



passage. In their behalf Assemblyman Thomas F. Lane, of 
Union, remarking that it was common scandal that the Legis- 
lature was owned by the race-track gamblers, made a demand 
for a public hearing. Barton B. Hutchinson, a fair- haired Re- 
publican lawyer, who sat in one of the Mercer county seats, 
joined with the fiery Union man in making the demand. Har- 
rigan, of Essex, quizzically remarked that he couldn't for the 
life of him see what there was so bad about the bills, and the 
sputtering Beekman, of Middlesex, spoke in a strain which in- 
dicated his sympathy 
with the touts among 
his colleagues. 

It was when Thomp- 
son, who had really in- 
spired the acts, walked 
out into the aisle to de- 
liver himself, that the 
high-handed policy 
which Speaker Flynn 
was expected to aid in 
carrying out was fore- 
shadowed. The Glou- 
cester magnate flew at 
the young Union As- 
semblyman like a tiger. 
Lane had taken his 
money for campaign 
use, he said, and now 
he was opposing his pet bill. Lane made an angry retort, and 
the discussion was at an end. How well the racing men had 
the Assembly in hand was revealed by the vote on this simple 
request that the opponents of the bills be accorded a hearing. 
Lane's motion was defeated by thirty- two votes, cast by Assem- 
blymen Armitage, Beekman, Byrne, Carroll, Chamberlain, 
Clarke, Coyle, Cramer, Daly, Dittmar, Diver, Dupuy, Flynn 
Harrigan, Henry, Kearns, H. A. Kelly, T. M. Kelly, Lanning^ 




Thomas F. Lane. 



446 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Lawless, Olvaney, Packer, Parker, Sheppard, Stout, Swartwout, 
Tahen, ThompsoD, Utter, Warne, Wright and Z3ller. 

Daring tiie discussion Speaker Flynn curled his lip con- 
temptuously and made a sneering reference to the protesting 
throng as one made up of " old women and dominies." Stag- 
gered by this gratuitous insult at the honest mothers and sisters 
and daughters of the Commonwealth, Lane stood for a moment 
like one at bay in the middle aisle of the big Chamber. The 
happy response soon sprang to his tongue, however. 

" The Speaker will remember," he said with impressive em- 
phasis, " that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." 

It was a stinging reproach, and the packed galleries fairly 
howled with enthusiasm as they heard it. The plan formed in 
anticipation of a great popular uprising, was to rush the bills 
through before the protest, for which Lane hoped to pave the 
way, could take shape ; and, under suspension of the rules, the 
acts were whipped ihrough and hastened to the Senate Chamber. 
The consenting affirmative votes were cast by Byrne, Carroll, 
Ohamberlin, Clarke, Coyle, Daly, Ditmar, Dupuy, Flynn, Har- 
rigan, Henry, Honce, Kearns, Hugh Kelly, T. M. Kelly, Lan- 
ning, Lawless, Olvaney, Packer, Parker, Peal, Sheppard, Smith, 
Stout, Strahan, Swartwout, Tahen, Thompson, Tine, Utter, 
Warne, Wright and Zeller. 

Of these, besides Parker, Utter alone was a Republican. 

The nay votes were cast by Barrett, Baxter, Berry, Burton, 
Cramer, Diver, Glaspell, Holmes, Holt, Hutchinson, Kyte, 
Lane, Matlack, Murphy, O'Brien, Roebling, Ross, Salinger, 
Stafford, Stanger, Studer and Wilson. 

Of these, Timothy Barrett of Essex, Thomas J. O'Brien of 
Morris, William Diver of Salem, George H. Cramer of Som- 
erset, Thomas F. Lane of Union, and L. M. Wilson of Warren, 
were Democrats. 

As to the rest, Armitage, Baake, Beekman, Gledhill and 
Woolsey were absent. 

The appearance of the acts in the Senate had been anticipated 
by a contest for the chair to which Atlantic was entitled. 
*' Fitzgerald's Legislative Manual " confers upon that little 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



447 



<30unty the apparent distinction of two Senators — Albert D. 
Hoffman, Republican, and William Riddle, Democrat. The 
two names appear because when Hoffman presented his creden- 
tials, young Senator Barrett, of Essex, had filed a protest against 
his seating, and Riddle, whom Thompson had persuaded the 
Democrats of the county to put in nomination, claimed to be 
entitled to the place, 
and the contest was 

still an open one ) 

when Mr. Fitzger- 
ald's very valuable s 
^compilation was 
ready for press. 
There never bad < 
been an honest 
doubt about Hoff- 
man's election, and 
the contest had been 
inaugurated only 
for the purpose of 
driving him to the 
aid of the race- track 
legislation. The 
seated Senator hesi- 
tated between his 
ambitions and his 
duty till the day 
before the bills 
reached the Senate v.. 
from the Assem- 
bly. Then he com- 
promised with his conscience, and agreed to cast his vote for 
the bills. Stokes, whose brilliant oratory in the Assembly had 
won him promotion to the Senate, and Colonel William H. 
Skirm, the military gentleman who spoke for Mercer, and 
Rogers, of Camden, all renewed in the Upper Chamber the 
demands Lane had made in the House for a public hearing, but 




R. V. Liadabury. 



448 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

all in vain ; and the bills were hastened through in speedy suc- 
cession the day they were reported. The affirmative votes^ 
besides that of Hoifman, were cast by Adrain, Butcher, Cornish, 
Daly, Drake, Hinchliife, Martin, McMickle, Miller, Perkins 
and Terhune. 

Barker, Barrett, Keys, Marsh and Winton, Democrats, voted 
with Rogers, Skirm, Smith and Stokes, Republicans, in the 
negative. 

The bills had not been placed in Governor Werts's hands 
before the State was aflame with excitement. The people bad 
languidly contemplated the pas-age of the acts. But the impu- 
dent refusal of the two Houses to permit them to make formal 
protest to their passage set them wild with indignation. The 
Elizabeth organization that had sprung so quickly to the defeat 
of the Parker bill, at Governor Abbett's instance, in 1891, was 
first afield. It was under the kadership of the venerable Rev. 
Dr. Kempshall and R. V. Lindabury, the distinguished Demo- 
cratic lawyer of the city. The suggestion went forth that the 
entire ministry of the State should make the double outrage 
upon public rights the text for the sermons of the succeeding 
Sunday, and every church appointed a delegation to be in Tren- 
ton the following week. 

Governor Werts needed no urging in dealing with such meas- 
ures passed under such auspices and by such methods, and the 
following day John S. McMaster, his smiling Private Secre- 
tary, appeared in the House with his vetoes. 

The gathering of the army of people was watched with pal- 
pitating and feverish anxiety by both sides during the time the 
bills had to lay over under thp rules for reconsideration. The 
burning question was whether the assembling multitude could 
perfect their plans and make their descent upon Trenton before 
the Governor's vetoes could be called up for action. The race men 
feared the effisct of the demonstration upon the solidity of their 
vote; the anti-race men hastened to make it. Great bodies 
move slowly, and Hutchinson tried to delay action till the up- 
rising throng could mass. But Flynn, playing his game with a 
keenness and coolness that showed him to be a dauntless and 
resourceful presiding officer — even if his talents were engaged 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 449 



in a bad cause — spurred his jockey colleagues over the home- 
stretch and the " racers" passed under the string, while the gather- 
ing army of protestants looked helplessly on from their several 
places of rendfzvous. The vote by which the bills were re- 
enacted in the Houie showed few changes. Baake, the Repub- 
lican Assemblyman from Atlantic, won condemnation by going 
over to the support of the racers ; Utter and Parker, who had 
voted for the bills at the start, were his only Republican consorts 
on the check- list. Armitage, Barrett, Beekman, Cramer, Lane, 
O'Brien and Wilson were the Democrats who voted to sustain 
the Governor. When the vetoes came up in the Senate, Presi- 
dent Adrain took the whip from Flynn's hand and forced imme- 
diate action. Senator Stokes made a speech in support of them 
— that is, of the vetoes — and Terhuae explained that as Mon- 
mouth county had a national fame as the rearing-ground for 
thoroughbreds, he felt that he was merely voicing the sentiment 
of his constituents in giving his vote to the bills for the second 
time. Except as to Perkins and Smith, who were absent, tie 
vote by which the Senate overrode the vetoes was the same as 
that by which it had originally passed the act. 

Foiled and defeated in the demonstration by which they 
hoped to overwhelm the racers, the people now Set up a demand 
for the immediate repeal of the actp, and Lane introduced 
repealers a day or two following. With the effrontery which 
had characterized Speaker Flynn's course through all the agita- 
tions, he referred them to the committee of which his race-track 
employer, Thompson, was chairman. It was assumed at once 
that this eminent Camden statesman would never permit them 
to see daylight again. Meanwhile the multitude which was 
preparing to swoop down on the Capitol with a mad energy 
never before witnessed in the State, made announcement that on 
Washington's birthday they would take possf s^ion of the Assem- 
bly Chamber and make their indignant voices heard. Timothy 
Barrett, the independent Orange representative, sent a resolution 
to the Clerk's desk extending to them the freedom of the Cham- 
ber. Speaker Flynn sneeringly declared, as he heard the reso- 
tion read, that the women and dominies would never be allowed 

29 



450 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

to use that Chamber for their indignation meetings. But the 
Legislature deemed it prudent to dodge the gathering army, and 
held no session on the day designated for the meeting. In the 
morning the throng came rushing into Trenton from every 
point of the compass — old men and young, big men and little, 
women and children, mothers and sisters, and sweethearts and 
wives, by train, by carriage, in stages and afoot — till there were 
close on to five thousand excited and angry strangers in the 
town. They marched in orderly procession into the State 
House, and held a preliminary meeting to arrange the pro- 
gramme for the day. They elected the white-haired Dr. 
Kempshall, of Elizabeth, President ; the equally-venerable 
Dean McNulty of Paterson, R. V. Lindabury of Elizabeth, 
and Judge William M. Lanning of Trenton, Vice Presidents, 
and Editor Charles C. McBride of Elizabeth, Treasurer and 
Secretary. They organized a perpetual league, and assigned a 
delegate to see that auxiliary leagues were organized in each 
county. General E. Burd Grubb was to look after Burlington, 
Judge Van Valen after Bergen, Senator Stokes after Cumber- 
land, L. H. Kellum after Camden, James B. Dusenbury after 
Essex, Rev. Judson Pierson after Gloucester, William A. Cotter 
after Hunterdon, William M. Lanning after Mercer, John T. 
Voorhees after Middlesex, James S. Yard after Monmouth, 
Willard W. Cutler after Morris, I. W. Carmichael after Ocean, 
Rev. Dean McNulty after Passaic, John V. Craven after Salem, 
J. V. Voorhees after Somerset, Judge Hiram C. Clark after 
Sussex, R. V. Lindabury after Union, and Rev. J. D. Bruen 
after Warren. Over these was appointed a State Executive Com- 
mittee of fifty to act as the central authority. 

The preliminaries having been arranged, the throng filed 
down the staircase to the door of the Assembly Chamber, and 
demanded admittance. The door was locked ; it was the general 
belief that Speaker Flynn had the key in his pocket. Some one 
suggested that Bernard J. Ford was the Superintendent of the 
State House, and a committee was appointed to wait upon him. 
He placed the key in their hands and the multitude rushed 
madly into the Chamber. The wildest cheers rent the air as 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 451 

the Rev. Dr. Kempshall mounted the dais — Speaker Flynn's dais 
— stationed himself behind the desk — Speaker Flynn's desk — 
and raised the gavel — Speaker Flynn's gavel — as a a signal 
for order. Well, to say that when the white-haired parson 
found himself in possession of the chair and desk and gavel of 
this arch enemy of the people, as he termed the Speaker, he just 
clapped his wings and crowed, may not be exactly accurate, but 
it is wonderfully descriptive of the impression imbibed by the 
listening thousands. 

" By the grace of God," were his first words, " I am in the 
chair of the man who said we should never be here," and then 
he launched out into a fiery philippic that kept the crowd 
enthused from the first word to the last. But it was discovered 
that even the great big Assembly Chamber was all too small for 
the assembled multitude ; and, having asserted the people's right 
to assemble in mass meeting in the people's own Assembly 
Chamber and defied the power of an accidental officer to keep 
them out, they repaired to Taylor Opera House, which had been 
engaged for use in the event of their failure to procure recogni- 
tion of their rights in the State House. There, earnest speeches 
were made by Rev. Dr. Dixon of Trenton, Rev. Mr. Parsons 
and Rev. Father McNulty of Paterson, by President Scott of 
Rutgers, Rev. Dr. Storrs of Orange, Professor T. M. Langdon 
of Bordentown, and Vice Chancellor Bird of Hunterdon. Rev. 
Dr. Dixon eulogized Barrett and Barker and Keys, and others 
who had voted against the bill, and announcement was made 
that every one of those who had supported the bill had been 
requested to present himself at the meeting and explain the 
reason for his action. There was but one response, and that in 
the repentant voice of Assemblyman Lanning, of Trenton. 

Mr. Lanning was a man of means, who had been held in high 
repute among his neighbors, and he felt the ostracism to which 
he had been subjected by his advocacy of the bill. When his 
little children came home from school in tears one afternoon and 
told him that crowds of their school-mates had followed at their 
heels jeering them as the sons and daughters of one who favored 
gamblers, his mind was made up, and he had straightway sought 



452 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

his pastor, the Rev. Dr. Studdiford, and made confession of his 
error and expression of his desire to correct it. This little story- 
was not told in all of its details to the crowd, but the bare an- 
nouncement that the Trenton Assemblyman had solemnly 
recanted threw the listeners into a frenzy of cheers. 

Of course resolutions were adopted denouncing the passage of 
the racers and demanding the enactment of the repealers ; and 
a committee of fifty was appointed to wait upon the Legislature 
and present the remonstrance. 

Under the prod of this overwhelming demonstration the com- 
mittee was forced to unbend, and it went through the form of 
according the public hearing. The League had commissioned 
ex-Speaker Bergen of Somerset, ex-Senator George H. Large of 
Hunterdon and ex- Assemblyman William H. Corbin of Union 
to speak in its behalf. A wintry afternoon sun streamed over 
the upper galleries down into the open semicircle that sweeps 
around the Speaker's dais. The members' desks under the 
shadow of the galleries were occupied by the gathered Leaguers. 
The gallery was black with people. The League speakers made 
cogent arguments for their cause. When they had finished a 
picturesque old man came with halting gait from the shadows till 
the streaming sun lighted up his pale, clean-shaven face, and his 
dark-blue clerical cOat buttoned close up to his chin. Every 
man in the audience knew the good Dean McNulty, of one 
of the Paterson Catholic parishes, and cheers greeted him as 
he advanced. He looked around hesitatingly, and, drawing 
his watch from his pocket and holding it in his hand, he began 
to talk for a limit of time he had evidently set upon himself. 
It was not a great burst of oratory — his address ; but it was so 
simple and yet so earnest an appeal to the better sentiment of 
the committee-men as to make it easily the most impressive of 
the efforts made there that afternoon. 

The committee heard them all, and then it was announced 
that the race-track men desired to be heard, the defiant crew 
craving for the very privilege that, with such hardened front, 
they had attempted to deny to the people. They had retained 
Colonel E. L. Price, the Democratic leader in Newark, and 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 453 



Samuel Kali?ch, an eloquent aod successful lawyer of the same 
€ity, to argue against the repealers. They were not ready to go 
on then, and they asked further time. It was only the race- 
track people's own device to delay and obstruct the passage of 
the repealers, and it is needless to say that the time they asked 
was freely given them. They made their arguments, but it was 
not because of them that the repealers never struggled out of 
the committee. The committee had been constituted to inter- 
pose just such a bar as a failure to report them, against their 
enactment. 

The session did not come to a close, however, till it had wit- 
nessed a notable battle between the arrogant jockeys themselves. 
The Guttenberg and Gloucester people had broken friendship 
while the bills were on their way through the two Chambers. It 
was said that the Guttenberg magnates had not contributed as 
liberally as they should have contributed to the expenses attend- 
ing the enactment of the laws. The competition of near-by 
race-courses in the spring, summer and fall left only the winter 
for Guttenberg's busy season. Though his course was patron- 
ized by a crowd that could not reach the competing courses, 
Thompson was willing to lose his winter business to retaliate 
upon the Guttenberg parsimony, and he had an act forbidding 
winter racing prepared. 

Assemblyman Joseph M. Byrne, of Essex, introduced it. 
Livid with rage. Assemblyman " Teddy " Carroll, one of Dennis 
McLaughlin's political and race track sucklings, fought it in the 
House, and Senator Daly, of Hudson, made some really bright 
speeches in opposition to it in the Senate, but it had been booked 
to pass, and through both branches it went without ajar. 

The work of the jockey Legislature was done now, and it 
folded its tent and stole away from its trysting-place. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Which is the Fitting End of the Story, and the Last Chapteb: 
IN this History. 




HE details of these later sessions of the Legislature have 
been gone into with somewhat of fullness, not more 
!^^^ because of their historical interest than because they 
mark the end of the epoch in the history of New Jer- 
sey which these pages cover. They were the culminating 
exploits in the rule of the mobs into whose hands the control of 
the State and of its municipalities had fallen. The State was 
indignant beyond measure at the outrage the last of her Legis- 
latures had added to the affronts and oppressions of its two or 
three predecessors. The race- track men applied to the towns 
and counties for permission to open their courses, and to two or 
three of them it was freely accorded. The Passaic Freeholders 
threw the clcak of the new law over the track at Clifton. 
The village of Eatontown commissioned old Monmouth. The 
town of Guttenberg, made up mainly of huts and mud roads and 
snarling dogs, stood as a blazing sword against official interfer- 
ence, at the Guttenberg gates. Thompson, from the Gloucester 
paddocks, fluttered the license of the Gloucester City Council in 
the faces of the people. Linden township officials were on the 
point of granting a license to the Linden track when they were 
overtaken by a scandal that prompted Supreme Court Judge 
Van Syckel to commend them to the consideration of the Union 
county grand juries. 

This spectacle of a lot of obscure little towns, not sufficiently 
conspicuous to make a speck on the map of the State, thus em- 
ploying the accidental authority with which they found them- 
selves invested to foil and defeat the better sentiment of the 
whole Commonwealth, in the interest of jockeys and gamblers, 
(454) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 455 



and the invasion of the State at both ends by a coarse, cursing 
rabble, was a new aggravation. It seemed to be a fitting supple- 
ment of the ballot-box rascalities, the delivery of cities and 
towns over to official looters, the oppressive scrutiny of the all- 
pervasive autocracy, and it was plainly the outcome of a general 
demoralization of public sentiment. It was a condition of 
things that the people could not longer patiently endure, and as 
the fall of 1893 approached it became apparent that the whole 
State was ready with a fierce determination to do the house- 
cleaning which it had been restrained from doing in 1892 by the 
fear of injuring the candidacy of Cleveland for the Presidency. 

There were no diverting issues this time for the recreant 
Democratic leaders to hide behind. There was nothing on hand 
but the choice of a new Assembly and a half a dozen new 
Senators, and the questions at issue concerned only home affairs. 
They had to come to the open and meet, without adventitious 
shield, the charge that they had abused their trusts, sold the 
rights of the people, outraged their consciences, conspired 
against their welfare, stained the escutcheon of the State with 
shame, and treated public office as a private emolument. The 
Democratic managers themselves could see that the arm that had 
been poised aloft in the campaign of the preceding fall was to 
fall this time with crushing weight, and they trembled. 

They still hoped, however, that the gerrymander of 1892, 
devised with the idea of preventing the expression of an accus- 
ing popular sentiment in the halls of the Legislature, would pro- 
tect them ; and the Republicans themselves feared that with its 
elaborate scheme of disfranchisement it would prove a handicap 
that they would find it impossible to overcome. They went to 
the Supreme Court for relief. The argument was an exhaustive 
one on both sides. The court had not reached its decision when 
election day came around. 

Then it was seen that the people had swept away even its 
great barriers with the force of a whirlwind. The bill had been 
framed so as to assure forty- four of the sixty Assembly districts 
to the Democrats. The count of the ballots gave over forty of 
the seats to the Republicans. The Republican majority in the 



456 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

State approached 30,000. Never in its history had the State so 
emphatically repudiated her rulers and sent new men forward to 
displace them and undo their wrongs and inaugurate a cleaner 
government on a higher plane. 

The race- track Assemblymen who had dared to seek re-election 
were repudiated with special emphasis. Utter, of Morris, had 
been frowned out of town by his indignant neighbors. Baake's 
renomination sacrificed Republican Atlantic to the Democrats. 
Even Democratic and race-track Monmouth refused to send 
Terhune back to the Senate, and elected Bradley, of Asbury 
Park, in his place. 

And, after the victory had been won in spite of the gerry- 
mander and in the face of the fact that every public place in the 
State was manned with a retainer of the thoroughly-organized 
ring, the Supreme Court surprised everybody by a ruling that the 
system of electing Assemblymen within district lines was not 
lawful, and that to be in consonance with the requirements of 
the State Constitution the Assembly delegations must be elected 
in each county on a general county ticket. 

The Republican leaders and legislators had ample notice, be- 
fore they reached Trenton on the eve of the organization of the 
Legislature which they had so overwhelmingly captured, that 
they were not to be allowed to take unobstructed possession of 
the State Senate. Rumors had been rife for weeks that some 
one of busy brain was conjuring up devices to keep the control 
of that branch of the Legislature out of Republican hands, in 
the hope of preventing legislative interference with the opera- 
tions of the Ring'^ and the tenure of the Ring office-holders. 
A challenge lo the whole array of Assemblymen was threatened, 
on the ground that they had been elected by districts, in ac- 
cordance with the gerrymander law, which the Supreme Court 
had just set aside, and not in the several counties by the voters 
at large, which the court had at the same time declared to be 
the only constitutional method for their election. State Comp- 
troller Heppenheimer made public announcement through the 
prints that he would, for that reason, refuse to surrender his 
office to a successor chosen by the Assembly in joint meeting 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 457 

■with the Senate. He afterwards withdrew the threat, and when 
it was discovered that the Re'publicaos had rather robbed the 
point of its tenability by abstaining from entering up judgment 
in their gerrymander proceedings, that plan of battle was aban- 
doned. Right on the heels of it came a suggestion that the 
Governor call the Senate together in special session, to give the 
Democratic majority an opportunity to unseat Senator Hoffman, 
Republican, of Atlantic, and so maintain Democratic supremacy, 
by a majority of one, in the new Senate. That idea was credited 
to Thompson, of Gloucester, and met with marked popular 
disfavor. The most reckless of the plotters realized that a con- 
vening of the Seaate in irregular session, to take from him the 
seat which had been confirmed to him by an opposition ma- 
jority, would lay everybody who had a hand in it open to serious 
criticism, and that plan, too, fell to the ground, while a wonder- 
ing State indulged in wild speculations as to the next move that 
was to be set on foot. 

It seemed for two or three weeks as though the situation 
oflfered insuperable obstacles to the destruction of the Republican 
majority in the Senate, and the people began to believe that 
peaceable possession would be given to the new Senators ; but 
these hopes were dashed when one of the newspapers announced 
the outlines of a new plan. This was to set up the point that 
the Senate was a continuous body ; that it consisted, at the hour 
for the organizition, of the nine Democratic and four Republi- 
can Senators whose terms had not expired and who were to hold 
over from the old Senate into the new ; that these were the con- 
stitutional judges of the election and return of the new mem- 
bers, and that they must pass upon qualifications and credentials 
before the newly-elected men could become full-fledged and 
active Senators. Before the organization day arrived, it was 
understood that George W. Ketcham, the new Senator from 
Essex; Daniel J. Packer, the new Senator from Gloucester; 
Lewis A. Thompson, the new Senator from Somerset ; Foster 
M. Yoorhees, the new Senator from Union, all Republicans, 
and Christopher F. Staates, of Warren, the only Democrat 
who had been elected to the Senate in the eight counties in 



458 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

which new incumbents had been chosen, were to be promptly 
admitted to their seats; but the intimation was that the 
filing of protests against their seating, which no one was al- 
lowed to see, would serve as pretexts for keeping James A- 
Bradley, the new Monmouth Senator; M. A. Rogers, re- 
elected to represent Camden, and John C. Ward, the new 
Salem Senator, indefinitely out of the places to which the people 
had sent them. The success of that scheme would have made 
a Senate consisting of ten Democrats and eight Republicans, and 
the legislative reforms for which the people of the State had 
voted would, as the result of a dead-lock between the two Houses^ 
be defeated. 

These movements were directed with special force against 
Senator Bradley. He had made a campaign in Monmouth that 
was quite as picturesque as it was successful ; and the eyes of 
the Slate had been attracted to him by the novelty of the methods 
he employed. His distribution of scrubbing-brushes with cam- 
paign legends of one kind or another upon them, among the 
housewives of the county, and of shining silver dimes among 
the younger fry as a temptation to commit his campaign songs 
to memory and to learn the measure to which they were sung^ 
was made the object of criticism by the Democratic leaders. 
They claimed that under the English law the employment of 
such methods amounted to bribery, and they prepared to make 
a contest for his seat in the Senate Chamber. Senator Henry S. 
Terhune, who had been the Democratic candidate against him^ 
disappointed their expectations by refusing to file a protest 
against his admission. Mr. Terhune based his refusal on the broad 
ground that Mr. Bradley had been the choice of the people, and 
that he could not participate in any movement to deprive them 
of their rights. But the disappointed Democrats ascribed hi& 
refusal to personal motives. Mr. Terhune was a close relative — 
and the heir-at-law — of ex-Senator Henry S. Little, and Mr„. 
Little was the bitter personal and political enemy of United 
States Senator John R. McPherson. Mr. Terhune argued, 
according to the theory of the disappointed Democrats, that 
a Democratic majority in the Legislature would favor the 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 45^ 

re-election of Senator McPherson ; and, to please Mr. Little,, 
concluded that he would not help to make a majority that 
might be so perverse, by insisting upon his seat in the Senate, 
even though he believed, as they suspected he did, that he 
might make a successful contest for it. Finding it impossible 
for whatever reason to tempt ex-Senator Terhune to pose as the 
aspirant for the seat, Mr. Bradley's opponents resorted to the 
expedient of preparing a protest against his admission. Such a 
protest is known to have been circulated among the Monmouth 
people for signatures. To what number signatures were secured,, 
only those who handled the paper can say. It was said that it 
was delivered to Senator Daly, of Hudson, for use as a foil 
against Bradley's election credentials, when he should offer them 
for acceptance to the hold-over Senators; but though Mr. Brad- 
ley made strenuous efforts to get a glimpse of it, Serator Daly 
steadily kept it out of view till the very end of the controversy 
that ensued. 

The slimness of the majority by which he had been elected ta 
a seat in the Chamber was the single basis of the Democratic 
designs upon the seat to which Ward, of Salem, had been 
chosen ; and in the case of Rogers, who had been re-elected to 
represent Camden in the body, the reasons for contest were even 
less tangible. Thompson, the manager of the race-tracks at 
Gloucester City, had found it impossible, when the race- track 
bills were pending before the Senate of 1893, to force or per- 
suade Rogers into voting for them, and he had made a strong^ 
attempt to prevent his return to the Senate of 1894. It wa& 
understood that General Sewell was not unfavorable to the 
Senator's re-election. Thompson went to the Camden chieftain 
and endeavored to persuade him to fight Rogers out of the Re- 
publican County Convention. If the General had ever wavered 
in his support of Rogers, he probably found in Mr. Thompson's 
opposition the most cogent of reasons for warm advocacy of 
Rogers' claims, and Rogers had easily achieved a renomination. 
The county had so pronounced a Republican majority that the 
nomination was equivalent to an election, but Thompson turned 
his race-track followers and his heelers of all kinds loose upon 



460 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



the community ; made, in a print which he controlled, the 
most obscene of charges against Rogers' personal conduct, 
and poured out money like water in the hope of defeating 
him. Ex- Speaker Flynn, who was Mr. Thompson's lieu- 
tenant in the conduct of the campaign, confidently predicted 
that the result would be Rogers' defeat in spite of the nomi- 
nal majority at his back; and the revelations of fraud in the 
Assembly district which Thompson represented at the time in 
the Assembly, made by an Investigating Committee of the 

Assembly, of which As- 
semblyman Storrs, of Es- 
sex, was Chairman, was 
excused by Thompson's 
friends on the plea that 
they had been perpe- 
trated not for the purpose 
of re-electing Thompson, 
but for the other pur- 
pose of defeating Rogers. 
Notwithstanding the ex- 
penditure of money and 
the Thompson heelers and 
the vile newspaper at- 
tacks and Mr. Flynn's 
confident predictions, 
Rogers survived the con- 
flict to appear in Trenton 
as one of the three Re- 
publican Senators-elect who were not to be permitted to take 
their seats. But their Democratic competitors at the polls failed 
to appear in the Senate Chamber as contestants for the seat of 
either, and, as in the case of Senator Bradley, the only objection 
that could be oiFered to their seating was the claim that " some 
one" had filed protests against their admission. 

It was plain to every eye that the stakes for which the men 
in whose interest this obstructive process had been devised, were 
■enormous. The race- course men contemplated spiking the judi- 




Maurice A. Rogers. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



461 



cial decision against the Race- track law with an appeal to the 
Court of Errors, and re- opening the tracks. Hundreds of State 
officials, whose positions would be taken from them by a Re- 
publican Lf gislature, and the thousands of officials in control of 
cities, towns and villages who were soon to be ousted from their 
places, would be made secure against interference. Men 
who had been in the business of owning Legislatures for 
the personal profit their control of legislation brought to them 
could still exact tribute 
for preserving the status 
quo for their shady clients. 
But in spite of the tempta- 
tions the situation offered 
to the Democrats in con- 
trol, the Republican Sen- 
ators were scarcely able to 
convince themselves, when 
they went to Trenton, that 
anything so audacious as 
had been suggested would 
be attempted. Soon after 
their arrival they held a 
series of conferences with 
General Sewell, Franklin 
Murphy, the Chairman of 
the Republican State Com- 
mittee ; ex-Congressman 
John Kean, Corporation 

Counsel Joseph Coult, of Newark ; ex-Senator Garret A. Hobart, 
the Vice Chairman of the Republican National Committee; 
ex-Senator John W. Griggs, ex- State Comptroller E. J. Ander- 
son, Colonel John J. Toffey, Edward Bettle, ex- Riparian Com- 
missioner Richard B. Reading, and a number of other con- 
spicuous Republicans. They began to fear that there might be 
something in the threats of the hold-overs when they had learned 
what these gentlemen knew, and the possibilities they thought 




John J. Totfey. 



462 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

they might be forced to face in the morning were canvassed from 
■every point of view, and their course mapped out. 

The night before organization never fails to draw a large 
ojncourse of interested and curious politicians to the State 
Capital. This feverish Monday evening saw Trenton in pos- 
session of such a throng as seldom invaded her. Newark sent 
down two or three large Republican clubs. Senator Rogers 
had come up from Camden with an organized escort. Every 
train from north or south or east or west rolled into the depots 
choked with passengers, and rolled out empty. Some were 
office-seekers ; some were enthusiasts ; others were drawn by 
mere curiosity and the love of excitement. By the time the 
electric lights had been lighted, the streets upon which the 
hotels faced swarmed with people. The possibilities of the next 
day were the one topic they discussed. They choked the hotel 
stair-cases and streamed through the hotel corridors in quest of 
tid-bits of information and speculation to feed the endless gossip 
of the night. By nine o'clock they were swaying in a solid 
mass from one hotel front to the other. The Windsor, which 
was the headquarters of most of the Republican Senators and of 
many of the Assemblymen, and the Trenton House, where Gen- 
eral Sewell held forth in the famous Room 100, were impassable 
for half the night because of the crowd. At the Windsor, the 
Senators were haled, by the enthusiastic multitude, to the 
windows of an upper story for speeches. Senator Ketcham 
made a little address, in which he expressed fears that the worst 
was to be and hope that it might be better. And Senator 
Bradley, though quite unable to walk because of a recent injury 
to his foot, limped on his crutch to the casement, and vowed 
that he'd take his seat in the Senate on the morrow, and stay 
there till, as he expressed it, he was "chucked out." The 
clamor of applause that greeted this somewhat inelegant 
announcement set the bell in the tower of the church across the 
street in vibration General Sewell and his companions in the 
Trenton House were serenaded, and speeches in similar vein, 
delivered from the balconies, provoked fresh outbursts of deaf- 
ening applause. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 463 

An unwritten law of the State fixed three o'clock of the fol- 
lowing afternoon as the hour for organization of the Legisla- 
ture. The feverish throng awaited the coming of the hour all 
too impatiently. Michael Nathan, the Sergeant-at-Arms of the 
last Senate, anticipated their arrival at the State House. In the 
morning he secured the keys of the Senate Chamber from State 
House Superintendent Bernard J. Ford, made a survey of the 
room, and went for his dinner. Shortly before two o'clock he 
returned, and took possession of the Chamber. The Democratic 
hold-over Senators straggled along one by one shortly afterwards. 
The crowd in the broad corridor was growing denser and denser 
€ach minute. It was menacing in its demeanor and had evi- 
dently gathered with the purpose of overawing the orderly pro- 
gress of events and forcing the issue for the Republican side. 
Nathan took it upon himself to bar all the doors — the fretted 
glass doors opening upon the broad aisle of the chamber, and 
the doors leading to the lobby-rooms and the galleries — against 
their admission. The throng pressed so viciously on all sides, 
that he became alarmed lest they should burst the locks, and he 
deemed police aid necessary. 

It was a hopeless task to undertake to push his way through 
the solid mass of humanity that had wedged itself into the 
corridor ; and, stepping through a window in the rear of the 
President's room, he ran across the lawn and was lifted through 
another window into the Executive Chamber. He made Gov- 
ernor Werts acquainted with the situation, and the Governor's 
telephone for police aid soon brought Captain Cleary with a squad 
of sixteen men to the building. It was with infinite difficulty 
that these stalwart fellows ploughed a lane through the crowd, so 
that those entitled to admission to the floor might make their 
way to the Chamber doors. 

Before three o'clock, eight of the nine Democratic " hold-over" 
Senators had taken their seats within. Senator Martin, the 
ninth, was confined to his home with an illness that kept him 
away for all the session. The eight were impatient to proceed 
with their programme ; and the big hand of the electric clock 
over the door had not sprung to the three-o'clock mark when 



464 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Samuel C. Thompson, the stocky Secretary of the last Democratie 
Senate, proceeded to call the roll ; and in doing it he called the 
names of none but the thirteen hold-overs. The eight Demo- 
cratic Senators responded, and Daly followed with a motion 
that Senator Adrain be chosen temporary Chairman of the 
organization, and other motions continuing the Secretary and his- 
assistants in their places. 

Adrain took the chair and toyed with the gavel for several 
minutes. Shortly after three o'clock martial music was heard 
in the hall. A band heading the Senators, with General Sewell 
and ex-Senator John W. Griggs in the lead, and followed by a 
crushing throng, approached the Chamber door. It refused to 
yield to their pressure, and Senator Ketcham tapped angrily on 
the glass for admittance. 

" Who is knocking?" shouted Nathan from within. "If he 
is a Senator, let him give his name." 

Barker Gummere, who was in the front of the processionists^ 
hearing the key turn in the lock, opened the door on a jar and 
pressed himself into the oijening. One of the Democratic door- 
keepers sprang to the knob, and in his efforts to force the door 
shut again crushed Gummere. He was forced back, and the 
multitude in the corridor broke into a yell of scorn and derision. 
When the tumult had subsided. Senator Voorhees, of Union, 
rapped again for admission. 

" We are Senators demanding our seats," he shouted, in his 
clear and resonant voice. The door was slightly opened, and 
George Coleman's face came into view. 

" None but Senators are to be admitted," he said, hoarsely. 

" Well," said Voorhees, " I am a Senator." 

" I know you," Coleman responded, " but there are some 
whom I do not know." 

" All right," said Voorhees, " let me in and I will identify 
the Senators as they pass through." 

The door was now drawn back sufficiently to admit of the 
passage of one man through it, and Voorhees, passing in, took 
his stand at the opening. Each Senator, as he squeezed hi& 
way through the throng in the hall, stood at the opening till 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



46^ 



«^f ^'- , 




f 



Voorhees had said " He is a Senator," and then passed in. 
The police, meanwhile, stood guard on the outside, shouting 
"Stand back!" to the pressing crowd with endless iteration, 
and applied their clubs freely upon the heads and shoulders of 
the luckless men on the edge of the throng, to enforce compliance 
with their command. 

The eleven Republican Senators — the absent four of the 
thirteen hold-overs, and the seven newly-elected men — were 
eventually squeezed out of the throng, by the crush in the hall^ 
into the Senate Cham- 
ber. They were sur- 
prised, as they trudged 
along to their seats, to 
see Adrain in the chair 
and the Senate appa- 
rently organized. 
That was an emer- 
gency that had not 
occurred to them in 
their deliberations as 
among the possibilities 
of the situation they 
were expected to con- 
front, and the plans 
they had determined 
upon in caucus did not 
meet it. Adrain 
seemed to realize that 
he had an indignant and determined body of men to face, and 
he had fortified himself for the encounter behind his blandest 
air. His sardonic face was wreathed in smiles, and he met the 
attacking party with goading suavity and good nature. 

With the eleven inside, Senator Stokes arose to a question of 
privilege. 

" We have come here to organize the Senate in the usual 




William D. Daly. 



way," he said. 



30 



466 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

Then, referring to the rumors which represented that the 
Democrats had determined not to admit Senator Bradley to his 
seat, he asked President Adrain whether Mr. Bradley's creden- 
tials would be accepted along with the others. 

" The Senate," smiled Mr. Adraio, " will proceed in accord- 
ance with the usual parliamentary rules." 

Senator Daly the next instant sent to the Secretary's desk a 
paper that answered Senator Stokes's inquiry much less evasively. 
It was a resolution calling for a special committee, to be named 
by Adrain and to examine the credentials, and preventing the 
seating of any Senators-elect until the committee had reported 
the credentials back. Every one understood at once that three 
of the Eepublican Senators would find it difficult to get their 
papers out of the hands of the committee, and that the Senate 
was to be organized without them. Senator Stokes declared the 
appointment of any committee to pass on credentials contrary to 
all precedent, and held that the credential itself gave the Senator 
holding it a title to his seat. The Republicans now proposed to 
stand on their constitutional rights, he declared. They were 
" determined that the people should reap the fruit of their 
victory last fall," and that the eleven Senators, constituting the 
majority of the Senate, expected to organize it. Then, turning 
his face to Senator Bradley, he asked of that gentleman, " Have 
you been sworn in ? " 

" I have," responded the Monmouth Senator. 

" Have you your credentials?" Stokes pursued. 

" Ah ! " put in Adrain, blandly, and turning to Bradley, 
" The gentleman has no right to speak on the floor except by 
unanimous consent." 

Colonel Skirm was on his feet in an instant. 

" No one can dispute my right to my seat," he exclaimed, 
" nor can my right to speak here be challenged. I hold in my 
hands " — he fluttered a bundle of papers over his head — " the 
credentials, not only of the Senator from Monmouth, but those 
of every other newly-elected Republican Senator." 

" Will the Chair accept these ? " asked Stokes. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 467 

" There is a resolution before the Senate," Adrain responded, 
^' that answers that question." 

Senator Voorhees leaped into the center of the floor and, in a 
burst of indignant eloquence, demanded the recognition of the 
Chair as a fully qualified Senator. 

" The gentleman has no right to speak," said Adrain, with a 
conciliatory smile, " and he will please take his seat." 

Voorhees went on with his fiery speech, in spite of the 
ruling. 

"The gentleman will take his seat." Adrain brought his 
gavel down on the marble stand before him to enforce attention. 

Still Voorhees defied and demanded. 

" Sergeant-at-Arms will see that the gentleman takes his 
seat," Adrain ordered. 

Nathan stepped to Voorhees's side. 

" Will you sit down ? " he asked in a voice that could be 
heard all over the chamber. 

" No, sir ! " — Voorhees waved the official of Italian counte- 
nance away — " You're not my Sergeant-at-Arms." 

"Ain't I?" blurted Nathan. "I didn't know you owned 
one, sah ! " 

It was seen that the eight Senators in possession intended to 
adhere to the plan outlined in Daly's resolution, and Stokes, 
gathering his papers from his desk, was heard to say that nothing 
remained but an organization of the Senate elsewhere. The 
eleven Republicans, with him in the lead, withdrew to the lobby 
off the north side of the Chamber. Before he closed the door 
he thrust his head through to shout to Mr. Adrain and the 
Democratic eight that if they wanted to be part of the real or- 
ganization they had better join the throag inside. It was half 
feared that Adrain would send officers to clear the little room, 
and the moment the door was closed some one braced his back 
against it. There, under the guidance of Stokes, the Republi- 
can Senate was called to order. Senator Rogers, of Camden, 
was elected President, and Wilbur A. Mott, a Newark lawyer, 
Secretary. Regers drew several sheets of foolscap from his 
pocket, and in spite of Senator Ketcham's nervous admonitions 



468 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



to " cut it short," read a somewhat lengthy speech of acceptance 
which he had committed to memory. 

Senators were sent to the Governor to notify him of the 
organization. The Governor met them with a pleasant smile 
when they had made their way, through the windows opening 
from the lobby, into the Executive Chamber, but a similar com- 
mittee from the " Continuous Sanate " had been there in advance 
of them, and he dismissed them with the information that he had 

" already transmitted his 
message to the Senate of 
New Jersey." The Re- 
publican Senators had 
gone there with the full 
conviction that their 
organization would meet 
with a rebuif at his hands, 
but they scarcely expected 
to be confronted by so 
plump a recognition of 
the rival organization. 
Governor Werts had 
taken the opinion of At- 
torney-General Stockton 
as to the rights of the 
respective Senates, and 
the Attorney- General had 
sustained the Democratic 
contention that the Senate 
was a continuous body, 
and that the newly-elected members must present their creden- 
tials to the hold-over thirteen. 

The fact that this opinion had been rendered was known all 
over the State. The Republican preparations for the contro- 
versy had been made on the assumption that it foreshadowed 
the stand the Governor would hold in the controversy. But 
while it was known that he would withhold the recognition of 
his department from the Republican Senate, it was assumed that 




Edward 0. Stokes. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 469 

the fact that the "Continuous Senate" had been organized with- 
out a quorum would make it impossible for him to hold any 
official relations with it. The Governor had been informed, 
however, that the roll-call revealed the presence of thirteen 
Senators, and as thirteen constituted the quorum of any possible • 
Senate, he had been beguiled into sending his annual communi- 
cation to it. 

Meanwhile, the House of Assembly, with, as already stated, 
a large Republican majority, had organized in the big white 
Assembly Chamber without any friction. John I. Holt, of 
Passaic, had been elected Speaker, and ex-Assemblyman J. 
Herbert Potts, of Hudson, Clerk. A committee from the 
Republican Senate, sent to notify the House of its organiza- 
tion, had quite a different reception from that which had been 
accorded the other committee in the Governor's room. It was 
not a more pleasant or a more genial one, but it was a more 
satisfactory one. The enthusiastic members broke into cheers 
at the announcement that the Senate was ready for business 
the sympathizing throng in the crowded galleries echoed the 
applause, and the House sent a committee to the waiting Sen- 
ators to assure them of its distinguished consideration and of its 
readiness to join with them in perfecting the legislation of the 
State. 

Thus recognized by its sister branch of the Legislature and 
discountenanced by the Executive Department, the Republican 
Senate was in an anomalous position, and a deadlock in legisla- 
tion supervened. The Senate and the House could pass bills, 
but the Governor would refuse to receive them, and so block 
their way to the statute-books. 

It was the idea of some of the Republicans that if the eleven 
Republican Senators could secure possession of the Senate 
Chamber, their status would be improved. They had arranged 
to hold an adjourned meeting in the evening, and the crowd of 
the afternoon hung around the corridors to await developments. 
There were shrieks, and cat calls, and whistles, and frequent 
demands for a bursting of the locked doors. At about dusk 
Colonel Murrell, a six-foot -high colored editor and politician of 



470 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



Asbury Park, braced himself against one of the light doors at 
the foot of the gallery stairs till it yielded to his pressure and 
flew open with a crash. Captain John Graham, of Jersey City, 
the same who had so materially assisted the Gardner Committee 
in the ballot-box stuffing investigation, rushed up the steps into 
the gallery, threw himself over the balustrade, and swung from 
one of the gas jets fixed in the Chamber walls, to the main floor 
of the Senate; rushed to the big folding doors that opened into the 
corridor, drew back the bolts, swung them open to the mul- 
titude ; and the crowd 
held possession of the 
Chamber till the 
eleven Republican 
Senators marched in 
in the evening and 
held a little glorifica- 
tion meeting there. 

There was talk 
among some of them 
of swearing in a posse 
of special deputies 
under command of the 
Republican Sheriff of 
the county to hold the 
Chamber against re- 
capture by the Demo- 
cratic Senators, but 
when it was remem- 
bered that Governor 
Werts had power to 
call out the State Militia, it was seen that a move of that 
kind might precipitate an ugly conflict of authority, and 
possibly bloodshed ; and that idea was given up. The Senators 
"were advised that the mere possession of the Senate Cham- 
ber gave them no rights that they could not as well exercise 
elsewhere; and, having on the floor of the Senate declared 
themselves to be the lawful Senate of the State, they picked up 




William S. Hancock. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 471 

their hats, and went away, leaving the doors open for any who 
might choose to enter. Till the settlement of the controversy 
the Democratic hold-overs were left in undisturbed possession, 
and the eleven Republican Senators, transacted business in a 
little committee-room across the hall from the Assembly 
Chamber. 

Governor Werts felt that the honor and wisdom of his admin- 
istration were challenged by this condition of affairs that made 
the orderly progress of legislation impossible, and he was anxious 
to find some way of taking the matter into the courts. His 
plans to that end were handicapped by the refusal of the Re- 
publican Senators to aid him in making a case over which the 
courts could have jurisdiction. Their contention was that the 
Legislature and the judiciary were co-ordinate branches of the 
State government, and that the courts could not, by any decision 
that they might render, make a Senate or unmake one. There 
was an idea prevalent at one time that the issue might be over 
some of the legislation enacted by the two Houses, but the in- 
ability to get a bill passed by them beyond the Governor's office 
prevented it from becoming a law which could be made an object 
of contest by those upon whom it bestowed office. Later on the 
two Houses, in joint meeting assembled, elected William S. 
Hancock, of Mercer, a rich Trenton potter, whose years of 
active work at the accountant's desk had peculiarly fitted him 
for the duties of the office, to succeed General Heppenheimer as 
State Comptroller; and George B. Swain, a rich lumber mer- 
chant of Newark, to succeed George R. Gray as State Treasurer ; 
and it was believed that the contest of these two gentlemen 
to wrest the offices from the two in possession would make a 
case of which the courts could take cognizance. When it was 
remembered, however, that the Governor would refuse to sign 
their commissions, on the ground that the Senate which had 
joined the House in their election was not the lawful Senate, 
and that without such a commission the two new incumbents 
could have no standing as claimants, it was seen that that inci- 
dent offered no hope of relief. 



472 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

It was determined, however, to bring the matter into court. 
The Governor called Frederic W. Stevens, a well-known 
municipal lawyer of Newark, and R. V. Lindabury, of Eliza- 
beth, into consultation with the Attorney- General ; and after 
much poring over books and countless consultations, they 
patched up a case over which they thought the court might pos- 
sibly take jurisdiction. This proceeding was on the assumption 
that one or the other of the Senates was a disturber of the pub- 
lic peace, and both Rogers and Adrain, the presiding officers of 
the rival Senates, were called to the bar to show by what right 
they acted. 

The issue was argued in court, with much skill and learning 
for the Republicans, by Thomas N. McCarter, Cortlaudt Parker 
and Joseph Coult of Newark, Samuel H. Grey of Camden, 
and John W. Griggs of Passaic; and for the Democrats by 
Allan L. McDerraott of Hudson, F. W. Stevens of Essex, R. 
V. Lindabury and Attorney- General Stockton himself. The 
Republicans, for one part of their case, denied the jurisdiction 
of the Judges, and on the main question urged that as the Con- 
stitution declared that the Senate should consist of one Senator 
from each of the twenty- one counties in the State, the hold-overs 
had no right to disffanchise any one of the counties by refusing 
to accept the credentials of an elected member ; that the creden- 
tial itself constituted the title of the man holding it to his seat, 
and that the Senate's power to judge of the qualifications, elec- 
tion and return of its members did not attach till the twenty- 
one counties were represented on the floor and the elect sworn in. 

The Democratic side presented a variety of views for the 
court to select from. Mr. McDermott held that the Senate was 
a continuous body, and that the new men were not Senators 
until their credentials had been passed upon ; that the thirteen 
hold-overs were the Senate of New Jersey, and that, as the 
Democratic nine were a majority of the thirteen, they consti- 
tuted a quorum that had a right to organize provisionally by 
placing Adrain in the chair. Mr. Lindabury addressed his 
argument only to the question of jurisdiction, and Mr. Stevens 
treated the court to a surprise in his insistment that neither 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 473 



Senate had a right to organize, and that, consequently, neither 
Adrain nor Rogers was a properly-elected President. 

The court held the matter under advisement for two or three 
days. The guessing politicians predicted that it would uphold 
the regularity of neither of the organizations, but would lay 
down a rule by which the rivalry might be compromised and a 
Senate organized for legislation. Almost before these guesses 
had taken shape, the Judges met in conference, and, by a vote 
which would have been unanimous but for the dissent of Jus- 
tice Abbett, decided all the points in the controversy. 

The aged Chief Justice 
Beasley read their opin- 
ion as formulated for ..^, ^^ 
them. Brushing aside 
all the technicalities that :, 
had been thrust into the ' 
case by the lawyers, he 
ruled that the Senate was 
not a continuous body ; 
that the credentials of 
the newly-elected cocsti- 
tuted a title to their seats, 
and that Mr. Adrain was 
not the President of a 
Senate. The necessary 
inference was that the 

eleven Republican Sena- "' 

tors constituted the Sen- ^'^'°' ""■ ^"'""• 

ate, and that Mr. Rogers was rightfully in office. Several weeks 
later Judge Abbett filed an opinion, in which he held the con- 
verse of these propositions, except as to Adrain. His ruling 
contained a remarkably strong argument in support of the 
proposition that the State Senate is a continuous body, and 
made out a case from that stand-point that commended itself to 
the judgment of many of the best lawyers of both parties in the 
State. 

The nine Democratic hold-over Senators had, however, mean- 




474 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 

while accepted the decision of the Chief Justice and his con- 
senting colleagues, and joined with the eleven Republicans in 
making the Senate, whose regularity was not afterwards disputed. 
With the House and with the Governor, it began the session's 
real work of legislation, and continued the sitting until the 
middle of May. Many of the bills that the two Houses enacted 
were aimed at the dispossession of Democrats from places for 
which the preceding Democratic legislatures had appointed 
them, and the naming of Republicans in their stead. The cer- 
tainty that Governor Werte, who himself was a Democrat, 
would veto them, led to a two days' session after the close of the 
regular session, for the purpose of overriding his judgment. 
Even then final adjournment was not declared, but recess was 
taken until fail, to afford opportunity for the enactment of a 
new Assembly districting bill, in the event of the Court of 
Errors setting aside on appeal the Supreme Court's decision 
directing the election of Assemblymen by counties. 



APPENDIX A. 



The following communication from Charles B. Thurston, of 
Jersey City, published in the Newark "Advertiser," during the 
pendency of the Water-front bills in the Legislature, traces the 
title of the Jersey Associates and of the Pennsylvania Railroad 
Company to the Jersey City water front : 

"It would puzzle most of the readers of the 'Daily' to tell exactly the 
derivation and the present status of the institution styled ' The Associates of 
the Jersey Company,' who claim to retain the ownership of the water front at 
the foot of Jersey City streets, from which the Anti-Monopoly Aldermen are 
seeking to oust them. The Dutch West India Company, chartered on June 
3d, 1621, having established their colonial headquarters on Manhattan Island, 
granted to all such as should plant any colony in New Netherland certain 
freedoms and exemptions. Concerning these, Mr. Broadhead says : ' Reserv- 
ing to themselves the Island of Manhattan, * * * to private persons 
disposed to settle themselves in any other part of New Netherland, the com- 
pany offered the absolute property of as much land as the emigrants might be 
able properly to improve ' These privileges were confined to members of the 
West India Company. Any member who should plant there within four 
years a colony of fifty persons was to be acknowledged as a Patroon or feudal 
chief of the territory thus colonized. Each colony might have lands sixteen 
miles long on one side of a navigable river, or, if both banks are occupied, 
eight miles on each side, extending as far back into the country ' as the situa- 
tion of the occupiers will permit.' Each Patroon was required, as a condition 
of his title, to satisfy the Indians for the land taken by him. If he estab- 
lished a city, he was to have ' power to establish officers and magistrates there.' 

" Desirable sites for settlement on such favorable terras were snapped up 
quickly. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer seized the regions adjacent to Fort Orange 
(called by the Indians Semesseck), now Albany. Samuel Godyn and Samuel 
Blommaert together appropriated lands on the ' south corner of the bay of 
South river." This was not the New Jersey river of that name, but the Dela- 
ware river, and the settlement was in what is now known as Cape May county. 
Michael Parroo, the thrifty Burgomaster of Amsterdam, appropriated to him- 
self the southern portion of the New Jersey shore opposite to Manhattan 
Island. 

"In the first deed of record in New Netherland, dated July 12th, 1630, the 
Director and Council of New Netherland, ' residing on the Island of Mana- 
hatas and the Fort Amsterdam, under the authority of their High Mighti- 
nesses the Lords States General of the United Netherland. and the incor- 
porated West India Company, at their Chambers at Amsterdam,' witnessed and 
declared that Arommeaun, Teckwappo and Sackwomeck, inhabitants and 
joint owners of Hobocan Hackingh, had appeared before them and averred 
that, ' for and in consideration of a certain quantity of merchandise, which 
they acknowledge to have received,' they had sold Hobocan Hackingh tO' 
* Mr. Michiel Parroo, absent.' 

(475) 



476 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



"On the twenty-second of November, in the same year, as appears by the 
•deed making the second, as the foregoing was the first, conveyance of land in 
East Jersey, tlie Director and Council witnessed and declared that ' Kikitoann 
and Aairoiin, Virginians, Inhabitants and joint owners of the land named 
Ahasimus and the peninsula Aressick,' for themselves and Mingm, Wathkath 
and Canwius, joint proprietors, in consideration of certain parcels of goods 
given them, sold and delivered to 'the Noble Lord Michiel Parroo, the afore- 
said land Ahasimus and Aressick, * * * extending along the river 
MaAvirtius and the Island of the Manahatas on the east side, and the Island 
Hobocan Hackingh on the north side, surrounded by swamps, which are suffi- 
ciently distinct boundaries.' 

"Hobocan was the Indian name for tobacco pipe, and, with the suffix 
Hackingh, signified ' the land of the tobacco pipe,' a peculiar stone found there 
furnishing the heads of their pipes. Aressick, signifying burying-grouud, 
was the southeasterly portion of the land now covered by Jersey City, and was 
known as Paulus Hoeck for many years afterwards, where a British fort was 
established during the Kevolutionary war. 

"Ahasimus included all the upland east of Bergen Hill except Paulus 
Hoeck. It was separated from the Hoeck by a salt marsh extending from 
Communipaw cove to the cove of Ahasimus, now Harsimus. 

"Aressick and Ahasimus together included all the interval land from 
Hoboken to Communipaw bay. Pavonia, where the Erie ferries are estab- 
lished east of Harsimus cove, is a Latinized version of Parroo's name, 
bestowed on the district by himself. 

"It was natural that trouble should ai'ise between the company and the 
Patroons to whom they had delegated these large powers. On May 13th, 
1634, their High Mightinesses the Lords States General, deputed some Lords 
from their Assembly to examine and report on the difierences which had 
arisen between the Patroons and the company. 

"The result was that the company bought out Parroo. The consideration 
paid him, 26,000 florins (about $10,400), was no doubt a handsome bonus for 
the lands now covered by Jersey City and Hoboken, for which he had dick- 
ered goods and merchandise with Teckwappo and Kikitauw, and the other 
Indian owners four years before. 

''Abraham Isaacsen Planck Ijought the whole of Paulus Hoeck from the 
company in 1638, and paid 250 guilders for it. He leased it with his house 
and garden to Cornells Arissen in 1644 for six years. The rent was to be 100 
guilders the first 3'ear and 160 guilders a year afterwards, 'if Jan Potagie 
[Soup John] continues to reside on the Hoeck ; but if said Potagie shall leave, 
the lessee shall pay for the aforesaid five years IbO guilders.' 

"Aert Tennissen Van Putten, the first white resident of Hoboken, was also 
the first to establish there a brewery of the beverage with which the name of 
the city has since been so widely associated. He leased the farm or bouwerie 
from the company for twelve years from January Isl, 1641, and his rent was 
fixed as ' the fourth sheaf with which God Almighty shall favor the field.' 

"Of the two houses built in Pavonia in 1633 while Parroo owned it, one 
was at Ahasimus and occupied by Cornelis Van Voorst, who came from Hol- 
land to be Parroo's head commander, and continued in it under the company. 
It was in this house that, accorJiug to Broadhead, Van Voorst entertained 
"Wuuter Van Twiller and good Dominie Everardus Bogardus, the husband of 
Anneke Jans, with princely hospitality, and, upon parting with his guests, 
fired a salute from a swivel in front of his house, which was burned down 
through a spark from the swivel lodging on the reed-thatched roof. The 
other house was at Communipaw, where Jan Evertse Bont, formerly Parroo's 
Superintendent, had his headquarters. He afterwards, like the Hoboken ten- 
ant, leased the bouwerie from the company at a rent of one-fourth of the crops. 

"The point at the mouth of Mill creek, Jan de Lacher's Hoeck (John the 
Laugher's Point), was probably so named because Jan P>ertse Bont was a jolly 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 477 



Dutchman. Governor Kieft and Council afterwards granted Bont a patent for 
this bouwerie, containing eighty-fonr morgens. It was at Jan de Lacher's 
Hoeck, in 1643, while Bont was still a tenant, that the Pavonia massacre oc- 
curred, in which Governor Kieft's soldiers killed eighty sleeping Indians 
sparing neither squaw nor papoose, and thus kindling the Indian war, which 
blazed fiercely for two years afterwards. 

"Jolly Jan Evertse Eont afterwards moved to Breucklen, where he was ap- 
pointed a Schepen in 1646. On his re appointment in 1654 he refused to accept 
office, an example which is rarely followed by the modern Brooklyn politician. 
"Governor Carteret when the English gained possession of the New Neth- 
erlands, confirmed to Abraham Isaacsen Planck, in May, 1668, by a document 
known as Patent No. 5, the title he had received from the Dutch West India 
Company for Paulus Hoeck, and this title forms the starting-point of that of 
the Associates of the Jersey Comj^any. 

'In 1669, John Abeel. attorney in fact for the owner, conveyed Paulus 
Hoeck to Cornelius Van Voorst, who was probably a son of Cornelius, Parroo's 
'head commander.' 

/•The New York 'Mercury,' of July 2d, 1764, announces that 'The lono- 
wished for ferry is now established and kept across the North River from the 
place called Powless's Hook to the City of New York ; and boats properly 
constructed, as well for the convenience of Passengers as for the carrying over 
of Horses and Carriages, do now constantly ply from one shore to the other.' 
The route to Philadelphia prior to that time had been by boat to Amboy to 
connect with the stage, but it was desirable to quicken the journey by making 
it an all-stage route. A landing-place for the passengers was secured at Paulus 
Hook from still another Cornelius Van Vorst. He sold Cornelissen, one of 
the ferrymen, a site for a tavern, afterwards known as Major Hunt's tavern ; 
but he did not scruple to endeavor to secure the ferry afterwards for him- 
self, for in 1766 he petitioned the New York Common Council for the 
exclusive privilege of ferriage between New York and Paulus Hook, which, 
however, was refused him. 

"It was not till 1801 that capitalists realized the future importance of 
Paulus Hook and commissioned lawyer Anthony Dey to negotiate with Cor- 
nelius Van Vorst for its purchase. Alexander Hamilton examined the title 
and acted as counsel with Anthony Dey. On February 22d, 1804, Van Vorst 
transferred the property to Dey, in consideration of an annuity of $6,000 
equivalent to a lump sum of $100,000. 

" The sale was made subject to a lease of Paulus Hook, which Van Vorst 
had made to Major Hunt, the keeper of the tavern where the stage put up 
which lease was to expire May 1st, 1805. The cincluding words of the de- 
scription of property in the deed were as follows : 'And so along to the North 
bay called Harsimus bay, of the North or Hudson's river aforesaid and so to 
extend into the river and bays aforesaid as far as the right of the said Cor- 
nelius Van Vorst extends ; together with the right of ferry from thence across 
Hudsons river.' This deed was acknowledged before Daniel Van Eeipen a 
Judge of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas of Bergen county. ' 

"By another contract dated a month later Anthony Dey agreed to keep in 
repair a road on the causeway adjoining Paulus Hook without any expense to 
Van Vorst; to pay one-half of Major Hunt's outlay on the new wharf and 
landing at the ferry, and a fair valuation for his buildings. An indorsement 
on this contract signed by David Hunt shows that the buildings in Paulus 
Hook in 1804 were not numerous. It was 'The buildings to be paid for are a 
dwelling house that Murphy lives in, the hay scales, a store house, the shed, 
and SIX small stables, a large cistern, and two pumps.' Van Vorst had agreed 
to pay Hunt for ' the old dwelling house, and the two large stables.' 

" By an agreement dated April 16th, 1804, David Hunt surrendered his 
lease at once, and Anthony Dey agreed that ' David Hunt shall have the privi- 
lege of three days' horse racing upon the course on the Hook within the course 



478 MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 



of the next month.' By another agreement Dey leased to Major Hunt the 
right of the ferrv from Paulus Hook to New York at an aanual rent of 
$1,500. 

" On April 18th, 1804, Anthony Dey and wife, of New Yord City, conveyed 
Paulus Hook to Abraham Varick, of theii^ame city, merchant. The conveyance, 
which included the ferry right and buildings, was !?ubject to a mortgage to 
secure the payment of Vaa Vorsi's annuity. The next day Abraham Varick 
conveyed to Kichard Varick, .Jacob Radcliff and Anthony Dey, as tenants in 
common, ihe lands on Paulus Hook, together wiih the right of ferry. Refer- 
ence was made in the deed to a map that had been made for the projectors, by 
Joseph F. Mangin, of New York. Hudson street was projected along the 
river front. 'Also,' the deed continued, 'the present wharves and the right of 
soil from high to low water mark, to extend from North to South the breadth 
of 480 feet on Hudson street, and the right and title to the land under water 
in Hudson's river, opposite to the said premises above granted, together with 
the exclusive right of ferry from Paulus Hook to the city of New York and 
elsewhere.' This document shows that the ancient proprietors of Paulus Hook 
made a claim no less sweeping of their right to sell the water front than that 
which is now made V)y their successors, 'The Associates of the Jersey Com- 
pany.' This deed and the foregoing were acknowledged before Judge James 
Kent, afterwards New York's greatest Chancellor. 

" By a covenant iu the deed it was agreed to affix such a rental of the land 
as would pay the $6,0(0 annuity to Van Vorst until it should be released or 
extinguished, when the money should be applied to their own use. 

"They also covenanted to unite with the purchasers of lots of the future 
city, in an application to the New Jersey Legislature for a law to incorporate 
Trustees for the fund so raised. 

'By an agreement dated October 11th, 1801, it appeared that Varick, Rad- 
cliff and Dey, with their associates, had divided up the land on Paulus Hook 
into one thousand shares, and the following list of shareholders gives the first 
record of the names of those associated with them in the purchase : Richard 
Varick, Jacob Radcliff and Anthony Dey, each 100 shares; Joseph Bloom- 
field, 20 ; J. N. Cumming, 50; William Halsey, 50; Alexander C. McWhor- 
ter, 30; Elisha Boudinot, 5 ; Samuel Bovd, 20 ; Archibald Gracie, 40 ; John 
B.Coles, 40; James Thomson, 20 ; David B. Ogden, 20; John Wells, 30 ; 
John Radcliff, 20 ; John Rhea, 20 ; David Hunt, 20 ; Joseph Lyon, 20 ; David 
Dunham, 20 ; Abraham Varick, 20 ; Peter W. Radcliff, 40 ; Samuel Haves, 
Jr., 5 ; William S. Penning.on, 20 ; L. S. Panbell, 20 ; William V. Wolf, 40 ; 
Aaron Ogden, 25 ; William Radcliff, Jr., 20 ; Samuel Pennington, 5 ; John 
A. Davenport, 10; J. E. A. Birch, 10; E. Leavenworth, 20; Ij-aac William- 
son, 20; Amasa Jarkson, 5 ; Thomas Ward, 10 ; Isaac Kibbe, 5. 

'• Varick, Radcliff and Dey are well known in the history of New York. 
Elisha Boudinot, J. N. Cumming, William S. Pennington and Alexander C. 
McVVhorter were distinguished citizens of Newark. Boudinot, brother of 
Elias Boudinot, of Revolutionary fame in the Continental Congress, was cho- 
sen Secretary of the New Jersey Council of Safety during the Revolution, and 
was for seven years a Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Colonel 
Aaron Ogden's term as Senator in Congress had ended the year before the pur- 
chase of Paulus Hook, ftnd he was elected Governor in 1812. He had served 
with distinction iu the Revolutionary War. He was succeeded in the Gover- 
norship by William S Pennington, another of the Associates who had been 
a Lieutenant under Washington. He also was a Justice of the New Jersey 
Supreme Court, and afterwards a Judge of the LTnited States District Court in 
New Jersey Boudinot, Pennington and Cumming were Directors in the 
Newark Banking and Insurance Company, of which Boudinot was President. 
It was organized in May, 1804, during the negotiations for the purchase of 
Paulus Hook, and had secured authority to establish a branch at Pauhn Hook, 
in contempl ition of the success of this early speculation in Jersey City lots. 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 479 



It was Elisha Boudinot and General Gumming with other Newarkers inter- 
ested in Paulus Hook who started Robert Fulton with a capital of $50,000 in 
the building of steam ferryboats for their new franchise. The first boat fur- 
nished, 'The Jersey,' made her first regular trips July 17th, 1812. 

"Joseph Bloomfield, who held twenty shares in the Associates stock, was 
Governor at the time of the purchase of Paulus Hook. Three of the Associates, 
Bloomfield, Ogden and Pennington, held the New Jersey Governorship during 
the twelve years from 1803 to 1815 ; a fourth, Isaac H. Williamson, father of 
ex-Chancellor Williamson, was Governor another twelve years, from 1817 to 
1829. As before the Constitution of 1844 the Governor's term was but one 
year, it is apparent that the purchasers of Paulus Hook had associated with 
them the leading men in New Jersey afiairs. 

"One month after the apportionment of the shares of Paulus Hook prop- 
erty, November 10th, 1804, the shareholders received a perpetual charter as 
' The Associates of the Jersey Company.' It was drawn by Alexander Ham- 
ilton. It allowed them to elect their own Trustees to carry out the covenant 
in regard to paying Van Vorst his annuity. Sections 2 and 3 of the charter 
provide : 

" ' Sec. 2. That the said Associates and their successors shall have power to 
make and lay out all streets and squares upon all and every part of the said 
premises, and to establish such as have already been laid out, and from time 
to time to regulate the same, * * * and to order and regulate the building 
sf all d^cks, piers and wharves, and of storehouses and buildings thereon. 

" ' Sec. 3. That the said Associates shall have the privilege of erecting or 
building any docks, wharves and piers opposite to and adjoining the said 
premises on the Hudson river and the bays thereof, as far as they may deem 
it necessary for the improvement of the said premises or the benefit of com- 
merce, and to appropriate the same to their own use,' 

" The Associates claim that under these sections, which have never been 
repealed except as regards the governmental powers contained therein, the 
right to maintain their docks as -at present located cannot be taken away by 
Jersey City ; that the corporation of Jersey City never owned or pretended to 
own the water front, as New York does hers, under a special grant, and that 
the Associates do own such parts of it as they have not conveyed away. 

"The annuity to Cornelius Van Vorst was soon settled up, and the first and 
second dividends of three per cent, each were paid to the Associates in 1813. 
The lands were gradually disposed of until nothing remained unsold but the 
made land east of Hudson street, the most easterly street shown by their 
original map of the contemplated improvement of Paulus Hook, and it is over 
this made land that the Jersey City Aldermen propose to push the streets to 
tide-water. 

" Previous attempts were made in 1850 and again in 1869 by the Aldermen 
to assert their right to extend the streets over the lands of the Associates, but 
the New Jersey courts decided against them. 

" Ex-Senator Leon Abbett, Corporation Counsel of Jersey City, declares his 
.confidence in the success of the suits he has brought for the extension of these 
streets." 



APPENDIX B. 



This letter from Charles C. Black, President of the State Tax 
Board, as to the extent to which the Railroad Tax act equalizes 
the tax burdens between the railroads and the individuals, may 
be of interest : 

" The points involved in your inquiry are not new ones to me. From my 
observation, I would say that the average tax rate throughout the various tax- 
ing districts of New Jersey would be about $1.50 on the hundred, or f 15 per 
thousand of ratables. I made a calculation in the year 1893, with all the 
various tax rates before me, and it amounted to about that sum. You under- 
stand, of course, that the tax rate varies in the different taxing districts from 
year to year, but the total average does not vary much from the above-indi- 
cated, according to my observation and calculation. 

Second. It is a fact that a large proportion of the personal property of indi- 
viduals escapes taxes— more so in some districts than in others— and this is 
particularly so in the large cities, where personal property is so easily con- 
cealed from the Assessors. Thus : For the year 1894 the relative value of per- 
sonal property to real estate in Hudson county was 8y\f per cent, of the realty; 
in Camden county it was 7/^ per cent, of the realty, while in Hunterdon 
county it was 37 j^ per cent, of the realty, and in Mercer county it was 2b^% 
per cent, of tlie realty ; in Salem county it was 33y'^ per cent, of the realty ; 
in Somerset county it was 29 1"^ per cent, of the realty ; in Sussex county it 
was 30/o per cent, of the realty, while in Essex county it was 17jL per cent. 
of the realty. It is also true that in the assessment of real estate there are 
but few taxing districts and counties in which the realty is assessed at its true 
or cash value. It ranges from 50 i^er cent, to its true or cash value on up. 

"The application to be made of tliis fact to the inquiry you make in com- 
parison with railroad property is this : I think it is a fact, as shown from the 
reports of the State Board of Assessors, that the railroad property, both real 
and personal, including their franchises, is assessed by that Board at substan- 
tially its true or cash value, which, of course, is in excess in valuation of the 
realty and personalty of individuals. The tax rate, particularly in the cities, 
is larger or higher than that of the railroads, but the increased value plus tlie 
assessment of all the personalty of the railroads, would, in my judgment and 
observation, substantially counterbalance the great amount of personalty of 
individuals that escape taxes and the low percentage of value of the realty, in 
most of the counties, of individuals ; therefore I have thought that, so far as 
equality is concerned, the practical effect is not so unequal. There is this ob- 
servation, however, to be made, namely, that, by reason of the railroad prop- 
erty paying the large proportion of the State expenses, based upon its value, 
and as the greater proportion or bulk of such property is located in Hudson 
county, it throws upon that county, indirectly, the greater proportion of the 
State expenses. I think this is an evil for which the citizens of this county 
have some just cause of complaint. 

(480) 



MODERN BATTLES OF TRENTON. 48i 



I am not qnite clear m my mind as to the proper remedy to rectify this^ 
inequality as against Hudson county, in comparison with the other counties, 
^ V 1? i; J railroad property should be assessed under the act of 1884 
and by the Board of Assessors, and the whole amount of tax derived there- 
from were gathered into a bulk and then each county should contribute 
toward the expenses of the government in proportion to the sum total of the 
entire valuations of each county, and the remainder should then be distributed 
to the counties in proportion to the property therein located, it would be an 
improvement ' 

^^^'^i^TTJ'^?,''''°^l?''^'^,*^^^ ^^^ principle of assessment involved in the 
act of 1884 by the State Board of Assessors for the purpose of assessing rail! 

sound^o^'n^''^ ^' ''''^ ^^^ ^''''*^ Assessors for that piirposef is a 

"Hoping that these observations answer your questions, 
" I remain yours, &c., 

"CHAS. C. BLACK.'' 
81 (431) 



TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER I.— BRIEF PRELIMINARY REVIEW OF THE HIS- 
TORY OF THE MONOPOLY CHARTERS 7 

-CHAPTER II.— EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH COMPETING LINES 

WITH THE CAMDEN AND AMBOY RAILROAD 19 

New Jersey Central's First Moves.. 19 

New Jersey Southern Railroad's Original Scheme 20 

National Line's Efforts to Connect Philadelphia and New York.. 21 
Effect of Lease of New Jersey Lines to the Pennsylvania Rail- 
road 23 

CHAPTER HI.— THE REPUBLICAN GERRYMANDER OF 1870, 
AND JOEL PARKER'S ELECTION TO THE GOVERNOR- 
SHIP OVER WALSH 24 

Democratic Redistricting Defeated 25 

Era of Disastrous Republican Rule 27 

The "Horseshoe" Assembly District 28 

Frelinghuysen made United States Senator 28 

Republicans Nominate Walsh for Governor 29 

Personnel of the Old S ate House Autocracy 30 

Judge Bedle and Leon Abbett suggested for Governor 34 

Joel Parker's Popularity 36 

Democratic State Convention, 1871 37 

Joel Parker pleads his Case before a Jury of the People 38 

Governor's Salary Increased from $3,000 to $5,000 a year 41 

CHAPTER IV.— BENJAMIN F. LEE APPOINTED CLERK OF 

THE SUPREME COURT 43 

Sketch of Benjamin F.Lee. 43 

Mr. Lee and John L Sharp 44 

J. Daggett Hunt's Disappointment 46 

CHAPTER v.— THE PASSAGE OF THE GENERAL RAIL- 
ROAD LAW IN 1873 48 

Legislative Organization, 1872 48 

Philadelphia and New York Schemes 49 

Assemblyman Canfield's General Railroad Act 51 

New Y''ork and Philadelphia Renews its Application for Legis- 
lation 52 

The Lobby the Railroad Rivalries called to Trenton 52 

(483) 



484 TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Origin of the Clamor for a General Railroad Law S?- 

The Stanhope Fraud 55 

Excitements that Followed Vice Chancellor Dodd's Decision 57 

Assembly (1873) Passes the Philadelphia and New York Rail- 
road Bill 59- 

Senate Shields Itself Behind a Pennsylvania Railroad Decoy 

Bill 59 

Philadelphia and New York Bill Defeated in the Senate 61 

How the Senators Voted 62 

Canfield's General Railroad Act Passes the Assembly 6t 

Passed by the Senate and Signed by Governor Parker 63 

The Pennington Railroad Riots 64 

Trouble at the Delaware River 64r 

CHAPTER VI.— THE STATE ESTABLISHES HER TITLE TO 
RIPARIAN LANDS AND DEVOTES THE MONEY TO A 

STATE SCHOOL FUND 66 

Early Contentions Concerning Under-water Rights 66 

The Wharf Act 68- 

Private and Railroad Invasion of Hudson County Shore Fronts.. 68' 

American Dock and Improvement Company asks Legislation 69 

A Bid of $1,000,000 70- 

State Riparian Board's Hazy Existence 72 

The Sugar-house Controversy, Jersey City 73 

Harsimus Cove Grant 74 

Jersey City offers $1,000,000 for the Property 75- 

Senator Little Stops an Act 75 

State lays Definite Claim to the Water Front 76 

Fortifies its Title with a Court Decision 77 

Moneys Devoted to the State Schools 78' 

State School Tax — How Levied and Distributed \ 79 

Speaker Niles's Work 79 

State School Superintendent Poland makes a Commotion and a 

Reform SO' 

Attempts to take the School Fund for General State Purposes... 82 

State School Libraries 85 

CHAPTER VII.— DEMAND FOR GENERAL LAWS LEADS TO 
THE APPOINTMENT OF A CONSTITUTIONAL COMMIS- 
SION 86 

Putting Jersey City under the Heel of a Legislative Com- 
mission 86 

Popular Excitements Due to that Invasion of the Right of 

Home Rule 89 

City Treasurer Hamilton Flees Jersey City with $100,000 of her 

Money, and is Protected by Mexican Bandits 91 



TOPICAL INDEX. 485 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER VIII.— THE COMMISSION THAT AMENDED THE 

STATE CONSTITUTION 96 

Governor's Veto Power Considered 98 

School Tax Considered 98 

Railroad Monopolies Attacked 99 

Legislature of 1874 acts on the Amendments 99 

CHAPTER IX.— JOSEPH D. BEDLE ELECTED GOVERNOR 
OVER GEORGE A. HALSEY; AND DAWN OF THE MOVE- 
MENT FOR THE DISPLACEMENT OF THE STATE HOUSE 

AUTOCRACY 102 

George A. Halsey's Popularity 102 

Judge Bedle Stands for the Principle of Home Rule 104 

Bedle's Majority , 105 

Legislature of 1875 — Organization 106 

Assembly Clerk Carpenter's Removal 107 

Leon Abbett and the State House Autocrats 109 

Skirmish Between the Two Factions over Randolph's Election to 
the United States Senate 109 

'CHAPTER X.— THE CATHOLIC PROTECTORY BILL EXCITE- 
MENT ENDS IN THE ACCEPTANCE OF THE CONSTI- 
TUTIONAL AMENDMENTS PROVIDING FOR GENERAL 
LAWS AND FORBIDDING SECTARIAN APPROPRIATIONS, 111 

Catholic Protectory Bill Introduced 112 

Assemblyman Kirk's Hot Attack 114 

Assembly Vote on the Bill '. 114 

Act Emasculated in the Senate 115 

Vote in Senate on it 115 

Abbett's Liberty of Conscience Act 115 

Church Attempts to Defeat the Constitutional Amendments 116 

Unsuccessful Efibrts to Adjust Legislation to the New System.... 118 
Rer. Father Corrigan's Scheme to Deliver the Parochial Schools 
to the State 118 

v€HAPTER XL— ABBETT AND McPHERSON TRIUMPH OVER 
THE STATE HOUSE AUTOCRATS AND Mr. McPHERSON 

GOES TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE..... 123 

Sketch of Senator McPherson 126 

•Possible Bearing of the Tilden-Hayes Presidential Controversy 

on the Senatorship Struggle 127 

Mr. Halsey and Gottfried Krueger 129 

Legislative Organization, 1877 130 

Caucus Disloyalty Feared 132 

Robeson put Forward by the Republicans 133 

All Eyes on Hannon 134 



486 TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Exciting Joint Meeting 136 

State Comptrollership Dickers 136 

Krueger and Morrow , 137 

District Court Act 138 

Governor Bedle in the Railroad Riots 14L 

CHAPTER XII.— THE SPECTACULAR CONVENTION WHICH 
NOMINATED GENERAL McOLELLAN OVER LEON 

ABBETT FOR GOVERNOR 144^ 

Mrs. Abbett's Political Work 145 

Orestes Cleveland Opposes Abbett 146 

Details of the Democratic State Convention, 1877 148 

Hurrahing McClellan Through 149 

William A. Newell Named for Governor by the Republicans.... 153- 
Newell's Maladroit Campaign 154 

CHAPTER XIII— EVENTS OF GENERAL McCLELLAN'S AD- 
MINISTRATION 156 

Governor McClellan's Inauguration 156 

Unsatisfactory Legislation, 1878 156 

Prison Keeper Mott's Trial 157 

Legislature, 1879 158 

Bankruptcy of Elizabeth 159 

Bankruptcy of Railway 161 

CHAPTER XIV.— MR. ABBETT AND HIS STATE HOUSE RI- 
VALS JOIN HANDS TO DEFEAT ORESTES CLEVE- 
LAND AS A CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR, AND NAME 

GEORGE C. LUDLOW 163 

Republicans Propose to Name Frederic A. Potts for Governor... 163 

Railroad Combinations in his Interest 164 

Abbett Selected for Chairman 169 

Details of the Democratic State Convention, 1880 171 

Abbett thrice Refuses the Nomination 173 

Memorable Republican Campaign 176 

Secretary Kelsey's Fateful Visit to Mr. Cassatt 177 

Fraud Charged by the Republicans 179' 

CHAPTER XV.-GENERAL SEWELL'S ELECTION TO THE 
UNITED STATES SENATE IS FOLLOWED BY AN ANTI- 
MONOPOLY AGITATION 180 

Legislative Organization, 1881 180 

Republican Senatorial Caucus 181 

Sketch of General Sewell 182 

Assemblyman Farrier's Figures Concerning Railroad Exemp- 
tions 184 

Charles L. Corbin's Strong Presentation on the Same Subject 185- 



TOPICAL INDEX. 487 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER XVI.— THE FIRST ANTI-MONOPOLY STRUGGLE 
IN THE STATE BRINGS THOMAS V. GATOR TO THE 

FRONT 188 

Sketch of Mr. Cator 188 

Railroads Nominate Asa W. Dickinson 18& 

"Cul" Barcalow's Disastrous Letter 191 

CHAPTER XVII.— RAILROAD ATTEMPTS TO PASS A WATER- 
FRONT SEIZURE BILL END IN EXCITING CHARGES OF 

BRIBERY 19S 

The Famous Senate Bill 111 193 

Mr. Cator Explains his Vote for it 194 

Features of the Water-Front Bill 194 

Governor Ludlow's Sturdy Refusal to Sign the Act 196 

Shinn Exhibits Five $100 Bills and makes a Scene 197 

Time Called on the Act 199 

CHAPTER XVIII.— JOHN R. McPHERSON ELECTED FOR THE 

SECOND TIME TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE 201 

Political Surprises of 1882 201 

Legislative Organization, 1883.... 202^ 

Combine to Defeat McPherson 203 

Republicans name Garret A. Hobart for United States Senator.. 203 

Sketch of Mr. Hobart 203 

Republican Members offer McPherson Aid 207 

Cator Attacks McPherson in .Joint Meeting 207 

Assembly Vote on Cator's Equal Taxation Bill 208 

Senator Griggs's Equal Taxation Bill 209 

CHAPTER XIX.- GOVERNOR ABBETT'S NOMINATION, AND 

WONDERFUL CAMPAIGN FOR THE GOVERNORSHIP 210 

Henry S. Little makes Charges against him 211 

Democratic State Convention, 1884 213- 

John Hill Discussed by the Republicans 214 

Judge Dixon Chosen by Republican Chiefs at a Dinner 214 

Republican State Convention, 1884 215- 

Dixon Refuses to Resign his Judgeship 216 

Governor Bedle Indorses Abbett 217 

Editor Reick's Story of Mr. Abbett's Tireless Campaign 218 

Sketch of Leon Abbett 223 

Scenes at his Inauguration and Reception 224 

Mr. Abbett promises to make the Railroads pay their Taxes 224 

CHAPTER XX.— THE PASSAGE OF THE ACT FOR THE TAX- 
ATION OF RAILROAD PROPERTY 226 

Legislature 1884 — Organization 227 

Cator Drops Out 22T 



488 TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Notable Faces in the Legislature 227 

Joint Committee on Railroad Taxation ,. 229 

Equal-Taxation Bills Presented 231 

Governor Abbett Prepares a Tax Bill 231 

Houses Deadlocked on the Question 232 

Features of Joint Committee's Tax Bill 233 

Governor's Bill Passes the Assembly 234 

Senator Griggs's Joint Committee Bill Passes the Senate 235 

Governor Abbett's Threat 236 

State Board of Assessors Affirmed 237 

Allan L. McDermott a Bone of Contention 237 

Charles L. Corbin's Circular about two Letters 238 

Railroad Tax Bill in the Courts 241 

Abbett's Pursuit of the Delinquent Delaware, Lackawanna and 

Western Railroad 243 

Governor Abbett Charges the Company with Having Cheated 

the State 246 

Movement to Confiscate the Company's Property 247 

William H. Corbin's Speech 247 

The Company Buys its Peace with the State 249 

And Pays up Arrearages, too 250 

Cator Leaves New Jersey 250 

CHAPTER XXI.— THE MOVEMENT FOR THE REMOVAL OF 
THE STATE CAPITAL TO NEWARK AND THE DEMO- 
CRATIC STATE CONVENTION OF 1886 252 

Schenck made President of the Senate 252 

State Capitol Burned 253 

Attempt to make Newark the State Capital 254 

Campaign of 1886 255 

Mr. Kelsey and Mr. Little make their Last Alliance 257 

The Democratic State Convention, 1886 259 

Republican State Convention, 1886 263 

CHAPTER XXII.— DEFEAT OF GOVERNOR ABBETT'S FIRST 
ATTEMPT TO REACH THE UNITED STATES SENATOR- 
SHIP IN 1886 264 

Labor Assemblymen hold the Balance of Power 264 

Disputes Concerning a Mercer Seat Outlined 265 

Turley-Haines' Assembly Seat Contest 266 

Rumors of a Bolt against Abbett 267 

Rumors of a Bolt against Sewell 267 

Friction in the Democratic Caucus over the Speakership 268 

Disorderly Scenes at the Assembly Organization 269 

Delay in Organizing the Senate 270 

The Joint Meetings 272 



TOPICAL INDEX. 489 



PAGE. 

Hezekiah Smith's Picturesque Career 276 

Mr. Phelps Strives for the Senatorship 279 

How Blodgett was Elected 281 

■CHAPTER XXin.-THE HIGH LICENSE-LOCAL OPTION 
BILL— ITS OPERATIONS AND ITS SUBSEQUENT MODI- 
FICATIONS 284 

Angling for the Prohibition Vote 284 

Features of the High License Act 285 

Vote on the Act in the Assembly 286 

Vote in the Senate 287 

Liquor Men Excited 288 

High License Popular 289 

Counties Vote Against Saloons 289 

Liquor Men help Democrats to Carry the Legislature 290 

Town Option Enacted in Place of County Option 292 

■CHAPTER XXIV.-SENATOR McPHERSON'S THIRD ELEC- 
TION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE 294 

A Little Romance about an Assemblyman 294 

Organization of the Legislature of 1889 300 

Senator Abbett a Candidate 300 

Prepares a Surprise for Mr. McPherson 301 

Vote in Caucus 302 

CHAPTER XXV.-ORIGIN OF THE BALLOT-BOX STUFFING 
RING AND THE SEIZURE OF JERSEY CITY UNDER 

THE COVER OF A NEW CHARTER 304 

Jersey City's 'Big Four "—McLaughlin, Davis, Feeney and 

O'Neill 305 

Davis Elects Himself Sheriff and Controls Grand Juries 307 

Jersey City's Single-Headed Governor 310 

Newark makes Objection 313 

Senator Peter D. Smith Hunted out of the Woods to Vote 314 

Cleveland Fills the Offices 317 

"Paddy" O'Neill joins the Y. M. C. A 319 

CHAPTER XXVI.— ABBETT RE-ELECTED TO THE GOVER- 
NORSHIP OVER GENERAL GRUBB 320 

Reaching out for the Senatorship again 320 

Democratic State Convention, 1889 321 

Local Option an Issue in the Republican State Convention 322 

CHAPTER XXVII.— THE STUHR-McDONALD CONTEST FOR 
A SEAT IN THE SENATE, AND GARDNER'S EXPOSURE 

OF THE BALLOT-BOX STUFFERS 325 

An Incident of the Inauguration 325 

Investigation Begun 329 



490 TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE- 

The Disclosures of Conspiracy 330" 

McDonald Unseated 333' 

Stuhr Unseated 333- 

CHAPTER XXVIir.-THE INDICTMENT, CONVICTION AND 

IMPRISONMENT OF THE BALLOT BOX STUFFERS 335 

Scenes in the Grand Jury Room when the Indictments were 

Pending 335 

The Indictments Reach the Court 339- 

Prosecutor Winfield's Labors 340 

"Tom" Trotter's Woman 341 

Judge Lippincott Presides at the Trial 343- 

Technical Points in the Cases 344- 

Appeals for Time 347 

Fruitless Efforts to Remove the Convictions to the United States 

Courts 349 

Sheriff Davis Shields Convicts. 351 

And is Indicted 352 

Court of Pardons Appealed to 352" 

Legislative Movement for Ballot Reform 353 

CHAPTER XXIX —GOVERNOR ABBETT HELPS THE GANGS 

TO SEIZE THE STATE AND THE MUNICIPALITIES 355 

Salary Increased to $10,000 355 

Local Lieutenants 356 

Seizing State Functions 360- 

The State Police Act 360- 

State and County Excise Boards 362 

Arranging a Democratic Gerrymander 363 

Haynes's last Election to the Mayoralty of Newark.... 364 

Democratic Charters for Paterson, Trenton and Camden 366 

CHAPTER XXX.— THE FACTS ABOUT THE RE-ORGANIZA- 
TION OF THE NATIONAL GUARD 369^ 

Sketch of Major-General Plume 370 

Weakness of the First Brigade 373- 

Rivalries for Brigadier-General 380 

Court of Inquiry 381 

CHAPTER XXXI.— DEFEAT OF FIRST RACE-TRACK BILL 

AND FORMATION OF ANTI-RACE-TRACK LEAGUE 383 

The Gloucester City and Camden Race-Tracks 384 

Assemblyman Parker's Bill 386 

Anti-Race-Track League Formed 387 

Senator Roe Defeated 388- 



TOPICAL INDEX. 491 



PAGE. 

CHAPTER XXXII.-THE STORY OF THE COAL COMBINE 

BILL AND OF ITS DEFEAT 389- 

The Roads that were in it 389 

Legislative Investigation 392 

Approving Bill Pressed through the House 392 

Assembly Vote 394 

Senate Vote 395 

Governor Abbett Refuses to Sign 395 

Miles Ross Angry 397 

Chancellor's Decision Dissolving the Combine 400 

CHAPTER XXXIII.— THE MOVEMENT FOR A HILL DELE- 
GATION TO THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CON- 
VENTION DEFEATED BY PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S 

FRIENDS 407 

Abbett Against Cleveland 407 

Hill's Visit to New Jersey 408 

Delegation Instructed to Vote for Cleveland 412 

Mr. Abbett Nominates Grover Cleveland 413 

CHAPTER XXXIV.-E F. C. YOUNG REACHES OUT FOR 
THE GOVERNORSHIP AND GEORGE T. WERTS IS 

NOMINATED 415 

Getting Werts Out of the Way 416 

Sketch of Mr. Young 417 

Counter Movement for Judge Werts 421 

Senator McPherson Quarantined 423 

Details of the Democratic Convention 423 

Sketch of Governor Werts 426 

Republican State Convention 426 

Sketch of John Kean 427 

President Cleveland's Visit to Jersey City 430 

Chairman McDermott makes a Scare about Ballots 432 

CHAPTER XXXV.— GOVERNOR ABBETT S FRIENDS ABAN- 
DON HIM AND JAMES SMITH, Jr., IS ELECTED TO THE 

UNITED STATES SENATE 434 

A Season of Doubt 435 

Hudson County Refuses to Caucus 435 

Governor Abbett Withdrawn 436 

Sketch of James Smith, Jr 437 

Death of Governor Abbett 438 

Governor Bedle's Death 439 

CHAPTER XXXVI.-THE PASSAGE OF THE RACE-TRACK 
BILL AND THE PUBLIC EXCITEMENTS THAT FOL- 
LOWED 440 

Some Faces in the Assembly 440 

Speaker Flynn 441 



-492 TOPICAL INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Legislative Extravagances 442 

Guttenberg and Gloucester Tracks Defy the Law 443 

Fruitless Attacks on Guttenberg.... 444 

The Race-Track Bills Introduced 444 

A Hearing Demanded 445 

Thompson Attacks Lane 445 

The Assembly Vote Against Hearing 445 

Flynn's Sneer and Lane's Eetort 446 

Vote on Bills, Assembly 446 

Hoffman-Riddle Senate Contebt 446 

Senate Vote on Bills 448 

Governor Werts's Vetoes 448 

■ Overriding the Vetoes 448 

Popular Uprising 449 

The People Take Possession of the Assembly Chamber. 449 

Rev. Dr. Kempshall at Flynn's Desk 451 

Lanning's Conversion 451 

The Citizens Heard 452 

The Jockeys' Quarrel 453 

•CHAPTER XXXVIL— THE CAPTURE OF THE STATE BY 
THE REPUBLICANS, AND THE STORY OF THE HOLD- 
OVER SENATORS 454 

Licensing the Race-Tracks 454 

Campaign on State Issues 455 

Plots to Deadlock the Legislature 456 

Scheming Against Bradley 458 

Threats Against Ward and Rogers 459 

A Republican Conference 461 

Excitements of the Night Before Organization 462 

Nathan Bars the Senate Doors 463 

The Minority Organize 462 

The New Senators Demand Admission 464 

Their Credentials Presented 465 

The Republican Senators Withdraw and Organize Separately.... 467 

Governor Recognizes the "Hold-overs" 468 

Assembly Recognizes the Republican Senate 469 

Taking the Contest into Court 471 

The Court Seats the Republican Senators 473 

Tlie Session's Legislation 474 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



Abbett, Leon, 22, 23, 26, 34, 82, 88, 115, 119, 
124, 130, 135, 141, 144, 146, 157, 160, 162, 
166, 203, 210, 216, 219, 226. 244, 246, 252, 
255, 264, 272, 274, 288, 292, 300. 301, 305, 
320, 325, 353, 355, 374, 389, 407, 415, 429, 
434, 440, 473. 

Abbett, Leon, Jr., 363. 

Abbett, Miss, 224. 

Abbett, William F., 219, 363. 

Abeel, G. N.,52. 

Abernethy, H. H., 381. 

Ackerman, Peter, 271, 281. 

Acton, Walter W., 171. 

Adams, Israel S , 215. 

Adrain, Robert, 302, 329, 359, 368, 394, 4B7, 
448, 464, 466, 472. 

Albright, Andrew, 168, 201. 

Alexander, Col. William C, 37. 

Allers, Henry, 335. 

Allison, William, 55. 

Anderson (Assemblyman), 59, 114. 

Anderson, David, 88. 

Anderson, Edward J., 83, 138, 461. 

Apgar, Ellis A., 80. 

Apgar, W. Holt, 425. 

Applegate, John S., 196, 209. 

Arbuekle (Assemblyman), 208. 

Armitage, John L., 208, 229, 445, 446. 

Armstrong, E Ambler, 229, 247, 253. 

Armstrong, Thomas D., 38. 

Arnwine, John C, 268. 

Atherton (Professor), 162, 213. 

Atkinson, Joseph, 269, 274. 

Aurand, Rev. C. M., 388. 



B. 



Baake (Assemblyman), 446. 
Babcock, John F., 97, 106. 
Bacot, Robert C, 72. 
Bailey, Caleb T., 387. 
Baird (Speaker), 270, 274. 
Baker, Philip P., 198, 292. 
Balbach, Edward, 253. 
Bale, Andrew J., 286, 302. 
Ballard, Rev. A. E., 287, 293. 



Ballantine, Robert H., 253. 

Bamford (Assemblyman), 209. 

Banghart, Johnson, 52. 61. 

Barcalow, Culver, 52, 191, 199. 

Barker, George W., 141. 

Barker (Senator), 39t, 448. 

Barnard, L. R., 370. 

Barnes (Assemblyman), 59. 

Barrett, Michael T., 121, 271, 395, 412 437 

447, 448. 
Barrett, Timothy, 446. 
Barton (Assemblyman), 50. 
Baxter (Assemblyman), 394, 446. 
Beasley, Chauncy H., 412. 
Beasley, Mercer, 242, 265, 349, 473. 
Beatty, Daniel, 196. 
Beckwith, James, 259, 273. 
Bedle, Joseph D., 34, 94, 104, 110, 111, 117, 

130, 143, 145, 152, 169, 195, 217, 230, 247^ 

272, 274, 432, 440. 
Bedle, Joseph D., Jr., 424. 
Beekman, John W., 393, 394, 441, 445, 446. 
Beesley (Senator), 62, 80. 
Belden, John C, 48, 90. 
Bell (Assemblyman), 195. 
Bentley, Peter, 68. 

Bergen, James J., 137. 156, 359, 394, 424, 452^ 
Berry (Assemblyman), 416. 
Besson, John C, 245. 
Berthoud, A. P., 51. 
Bettle, Edward, 29, 50, 90, 238, 461. 
Bevans (Assemblyman), 22. 
Bigelow, Moses, 302. 
Bird, John T., 105, 119, 148, 172, 451. 
Black, Charles C, 343,480. 
Blackwell, Jonathan, 115. 
Blake, John L,, 201, 254, 276. 
Blancke (Assemblyman), 114. 
Blodgett, Rufas, 256, 278, 321. 
Bloomer (Assemblyman), 286. 
Bogart, John W., 114, 302. 
Bolton (Assemblyman), 208. 
Bonsall (Assemblyman), 88. 
Bosenbury (Senator), 196. 
Bowes, J. J., 388. 
Bowler, George H.,335. 
Bradley, James A., 456, 458, 462, 466.. 

(493) 



494 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



Bradley, Joseph P., 12S. 

■Braker, Benjamin, 255. 

Brett, Rev. Cornelius, 293. 

Brigham, Lewis A., 136, 276. 

Brinkerhoff, William, 98, 227, 229, 230, 247. 

Broadhead, , 221. 

Brown (Assemblyman), 286. 
Brown, John T., 387. 
Browning, Abraham, 52, 72. 
Bruen, Rev. J. D., 450. 
Bryant (Assemblyman), 208. 
Burroughs (Assemblyman), 136. 
Buckley, Benjamin, 98. 
Budd (Assemblyman), 208. 
Burgess, Rush, 229. 
Burns (Assemblyman), 394. 
Burr, Rev. E, W., 388. 
Burton (Assemblyman), 446. 
Busch, Herman D., 25. 
Butcher (Senator), 395, 448. 
Byrae, Joseph M , 410, 445, 4i>3. 



Cabine, Robert B., 27. 

Cadwallader, A. C.,51. 

Caminade, John, 255. 

Campbell (Assemblyman), 209. 

Campbell, Edward A., 370. 

Campbell, William B , 361. 

Canfleld, Augustus, 51. 

Canfield, Edward, 55. 

Carey (Assemblyman), 108, 114. 

Carleton, A. B.,160. 

Carmichael, I. W., 450. 

Carpenter, John, Jr., 59, 106, 114. 

Carr, John C, 384. 

Carroll, J., 394. 

Carroll, Dr. Henry K , 287. 

UarroU (of Passaic), 264. 

Carroll, T. J., 394, 440, 445, 453. 

Carrollton (Assemblyman), 114. 

Carse (General), 48, 59. 

Carscallen, John D., 100, 114. 

Carson (Constable), 91. 

Carter, Beniamin F., 97, 105, 149. 

Carter, William H., 287. 

Cassatt, A. J., 177. 

Cassedy, George W., 242. 

Cator, Thomas V., 188, 193, 197, 201, 208, 

227, 233, 247, 250. 
Cattell, Alexander G., 27, 238, 263, 271. 
Cavanagh, John, 335, 394. 
Cavileer (Assemblyman), 136. 
Cecil, John R., 51. 
Chamberlain (Assemblyman), 272, 445. 

Chambly, , 266. 

Champney, Benjamin, 91. 
Champney, Frank, 134. 



Chapman, E. O., 207, 208, 228. 

Chase, Daniel C. 267, 272, 274. 

Chattle, Thomas G., 202, 209, 229, 272, 274. 

Chew, Sinnickson, 50. 

Christie (Assemblyman), 286. 

Clark, A. Bailey, 27. 

Clark, Alvah A., 169, 276. 

Clark, Amos, 52, 164. 

Clark (Assemblyman), 22. 

Clark, HiramC , 450. 

Clark, James C, 193, 203, 208. 

Clark, William, 253. 

Clarke (Assemblyman), 440, 445. 

Cleveland, Grover, 407. 

Cleveland, James M., 388. 

Cleveland, Jerersiah B., 317. 

Cleveland, Orestes, 34, 146, 166, 259, 310, 

318, 364. 
Cobb (Senator), 74, 226. 
Cochran, Lewis, 213 
Colby, Gardner R., 154, 254, 263. 
Cole, Eugene C, 367, 393. 
Cole, Prank O., 208, 228, 233. 
Coleman, George K., 464. 
Coudit, Israel, 11. 
Condon, Patrick J., 335. 
Cougar, Horace N., 119. 
Conkling (Assemblyman), 286. 
Connelly, James F., 261, 421, 435. 
Conover (Assemblyman), 90, 114. 
Conover, W. V., 114. 
Conroy (Assemblyman), 208, 219. 
Coogan (Assemblyman), 88. 
Cooley (Assemblyman), 59. 
Coombs (Assemblyman), 209. 
Cooper (Assemblyman), 136. 
Corbin, Charles L., 185, 201, 230, 235. 
Corbiu (Colonel), 93. 
Corbin, William H., 244, 247, 254, 267, 272, 

274, 329, 452. 
Corey (Assemblyman), 136. 
Cornelison, John M., 68. 
Cornish, Johnston, 395, 396, 448. 
Cornish, Joseph, 61, 76, 115. 
Corrigan (Father), 119. 
Cotter, William A., 450. 
Coult, Joseph. 153, 461, 472. 
Cowart, Rev. S. C, 388. 
Coyle, Michael, 121, 394, 440, 445. 
Cramer (Assemblyman), 445, 446. 
Cranmer, George T., 209, 287, 395. 
Craven, John V., 450. 

Creveling, , 116. 

Cronan, Cornelius J., 308. 
Cronk (Assemblyman), 208, 209. 
Crowell, Joseph T., 72. 
Crusius, Nicholas Y., 384. 
Culver, Delos E., 27, 52. 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



495 



■Culver, Isaac B., 27, 52. 

€ummings, Benjamin, 11. 

Cunningham (Assemblyman), 136. 

Curtin, Alexander G., 40. 

Cutler, Augustus W., 48, 61, 70, 97, 173, 213, 

226, 261, 425. 
Cutler, Ephraim, 286, 302. 
Cutler, WillardW., 450. 

D. 

Daly (Assemblyman), 394, 441, 445. 

Daly, William D., 121, 261, 343, 425, 448, 453, 

459. 
Datz, Emil E., 161. 
Davis, Robert, 295, 302, 305, 319, 328, 335, 

356, 361, 429. 
Davidson (Assemblyman), 394. 
Dayton, James B , 72. 
Dayton (Senator), 115. 
Deacon (Senator), 196. 
De Forest, Robert W , 242, 399. 
Dempsey (Assemblyman), 394. 
Dennis, A. L , 22. 
De Ronde, Abram, 302. 
Dickinson, Asa W., 189. 
Dickinson, Isaac B., 38. 
Dickinson, Philemon, 97. 
Diskinson, Samuel D., 229, 276, 285, 286, 

314. 
Dillon, JohnF., 249. 
Dillon, Sidney, 27. 
Dittmar (Assemblyman), 440, 445. 
Diver (Assemblyman), 445, 446. 
Diverty J. S., 288. 
Dixon, Jonathan, 87, 215, 223. 
Dixon, Rev. John, 388, 451. 
Dodd, Amzi, 55. 
Dodd, David, 114, 117, 152, 261. 
Denohue (of Passaic), 264. 
Donnelly, Peter T., 302, 318. 
Donnelly, Richard A., 425. 
Doron (Assemblyman), 271. 
Dorrance, George, 52. 
Doughty (Senator), 196, 
Doyle (Assemblyman), 112, 114, 117. 
Drake (Assemblyman), 136. 
Drake (Senator), 448. 
Drohan, Martin M., 135. 
Dudley, Thomas H,, 181. 
Duncan (General), 215, 263. 
Dupuy (Assemblyman), 394, 445. 
Dusenberry (Assemblyman), 286. 
Dusenbury, James B. , 450. 
Dwyer, John, 88. 
Dye, Anthony, 11. 

E. 
Edelstein, John, 288. 
Edge, Benjamin, 335, 336. 



Edmunds (Assemblyman), 114. 

Edsall (Senator), 62. 

Edwards, William D.. 274, 287, 302, 312, 

317, 424. 
Emery, John R , 399. 
Emley, Eugene, 286. 
Erlenkotter (Lieut.-Col ). 381. 
Ernst (Assemblyman), 394. 
Erwin (Assemblyman), 356. 
Everitt, Moses K., 302. 
Everitt, Rev. B. S., 287. 

F. 

Fagan, Lawrence, 302, 335. 

Farrell, Edward P., 286, 302. 

Farrier, George H., 41, 59, 88, 201, 227. 

Fayerweather, W. O., 388. 

Feeney, John P., 270, 286, 302, 305, 317, 319, 

361. 
Felter, Garret, 335. 
Ferrell, Thomas M., 197. 201. 
Ferry, George J., 97, 254, 288. 
Fiedler, Wm. H. F., 198, 201. 
Fielder, James F., 89. 
Fish, Frederick S , 247, 253, 271, 272. 
Fisher, Isaac L., 50, 97. 
Fisk, Clinton B., 284. 
Fisk, James, Jr., 15. 
Fitzgerald, Julius C, 100, 112, 114. 
Flynn, Thomas, 198, 203, 208, 367, 394, 441, 

445, 450, 460. 
Ford, Bernard J., 450, 462. 
Foreman (Assemblyman), 59. 
Forker, Samuel C, 51. 
Forman (Assemblyman), 209. 
Fort, J. Frank, 253, 323. 
Foster, John Y., 130, 179, 287, 322. 
Fowler (Senator), 395. 
Francois, Judson C, 302. 
Freeman (Assemblyman), 209. 
Frelinghuysen, Frederick T., 28, 72, 123, 

127, 129, 181, 254. 
French (Assemblyman), 114. 
French, Levi, 25. 
French, Wm. H,, 372. 
Fuller, Charles W., 286. 
Fuller, W. J. A., 223. 

G. 

Gaddis, Elisha B., 254. 

Gallagher (Assemblyman), 286. 

Gardner, John J., 119, 180, 196, 202, 215, 287, 

301, 329, 395. 
Garretson, A. Q., 330, 343. 
Garrettson, John T., 218. 
Gassert, Frederick, 335. 
Gaston (Assemblyman), 198, 208. 
Gibbon, , 230. 



496 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



Gibbons, , 30, 66. 

Gilchrist, Robert, 97, 109, 110, 127, 215. 

Gill (Assemblyman). 208. 

Gill, William H., 100, 108, 114. 

Glaspell (Assemblyman), 446. 

Gledhill (Assemblyman), 394, 416. 

Glorieux (Assemblyman), 394. 

Glover, Rev. Charles P., 388. 

Goble, Jonathan, 114, 286. 

Goddard, Frederick, 3:?5. 

Gomer (Assemblyman), 138. 

Goodwin (Assemblyman), 209. 

Gopsill, James, 74. 

Gordon (Assemblyman), 114. 

Gordon, Leonard J , 335, 336. 

Gourley, William B., 424. 

Graham, John A., 340, 470. 

Grant, General U. S., 102. 

Grant, William H., 255. 

Gray, George R., 171, 363. 

Green, Ashbel, 128, 129, 149. 

Green, Edward T., 349. 

Green, Robert S., 97, 256, 293, 355, 374. 

Gregory (Commissioner), 89. 

Gregory, Dudley S., 11, 68, 97. 

Grey, Samuel, 26, 97, 472. 

Grosscup, Charles C, 25. 

Griggs, John W., 131, 136, 209, 216, 229, 233, 

243, 252, 271, 274, 284, 287, 461, 464, 472. 
Grubb, E. Burd, 321, 427, 450. 
Gummere, Barker, 119, 235, 464. 
Gummere, William S., 242. 
Gurney (Assemblyman), 88. 

H. 

Haggerty, Daniel W., 361, 394. 

Haight, Charles B., 38, 259. 

Haines, George T., 209, 266. 

Haines, Joseph H., 287. 

Hains, Rev. D. B., 388. 

Halsey (Assemblyman), 114. 

Halsey, George A., 102, 129, 155, 181, 253, 

271, 301, 322. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 10, 91. 
Hamilton, Henry M., 27, 52. 
Hancock, William S., 471. 
Hannon, Thomas J., 133. 
Hansen (Assemblyman), 286. 
Hardenbergh, A. A., 133, 161, 172, 213, 419. 
Hardin John R., 361, 367, 394. 
Harrington (Assemblyman), 286. 
Harrigan, William, 208, 229, 236, 254, 288, 

440, 445. 
Harris, Alexander W., 133. 
Havens (Senator), 61, 90, 197. 
Hawkins, Thomas H., 268, 271, 272, 275. 
Hayes, Rutherford B., 128. 
Haynes, Joseph E., 3&4. 



Hays, James L , 372 
Heany (Assemblyman), 394. 
Hendrickson (Assemblyman), 114. 
Hendrickson, Charles T., 61, 108, 115, 156, 

213, 259. 
Henry, David, 114. 
Henry (Doctor), 440, 445. 
Henry, Thomas S., 113, 114. 
Heppenheimer, Otto, 317. 
Heppenheimer, William C, 282, 286, 302, 

327, 362, 381. 
Herring, H. C, 114. 
Herring, Richard M., 114. 
Hewitt, Abram S., 52. 
Hewitt (Senator), 50, 61, 90. 
Higgins, A. A., 286, 302. 
Higgins, G. H., 286. 
HinchlifTe, John, 361, 395, 424, 448. 
Hill (Assemblyman), 136. 
Hill, Charles E., 272, 286. 
Hill, David B., 408. 
Hill, John, 29, 115, 137, 214. 
Hill, William, 207, 208. 
Hires, George, 196. 
Hobart, Garret A., 54, 98, 136, 162, 166, 177;, 

179, 180, 196, 203, 215, 218, 271, 324, 461. 
Hoey, James, 68. 
Hoffman, Albert, 219, 343. 
Hoffman, Albert D., 447. 
Hoffman (.Assemblyman), 209, 394. 
Hoffman, John T., 156. 
Hoffman, William T., 164, 242, 298, 329. 
Holmes (Assemblyman), 446. 
Holt (Assemblyman), 446. 
Holt, John I., 469. 
Honce (Assemblyman), 394, 441. 
Hoover, Eliphalet, 286, 302. 
Hope, Col. A. D., 29. 
Hopkins (Senator), 62, 90, 115. 
Hopper, John, 100, 115, 149, 162, 163, 261. 
Homblower (Assemblyman), 89. 
Howell, George P. , 126. 
Howell, James E., 131, 136. 
Howey, Benjamin F., 268. 

Hoxsey, , 29. 

Hubbell, A. S., 98. 

Hudspeth, Robert S., 246, 273, 300, 302, 312^. 

317, 395. 
Hugg (Judge), 385. 
Hughes, Frank, 387, 388. 
Hunt, HoUoway W., 173. 
Hunt, J. Daggett, 37, 43, 54. 
Hutchinson, Barton B., 394, 445, 446. 
Hutchinson, Robert C, 208, 286. 



Irick (Senator), 62, 90, 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



497 



Jackson, John P., 162. 
Jackson, Rev. J. C, 388. 
Jackson, Schuyler B., 158. 
Jackson, William, 55. 
Jackson, William H., 237. 
Jamison, Charles, 130. 
Jaquette, Charles, 388. 
Jarrard, Levi D., 48, 62, 90, 115. 
JeflFery, Oscar, 293. 
Jenkins, George, 208. 
Jenkinson, George B., 254. 
Jernee, William R., 203, 209. 
Jewett (Assemblyman), 265. 
Johnson, John T., 69. 
Johnson, John T., 399. 
Jolly, Isaac B., 55. 
Jones, J. Weyman, 102. 
Jones, Josiah, 265, 286. 
Jordan, Thomas D., 161. 

K. 

Kalisch, Leonard, 302, 394. 

Kalisch, Samuel, 453. 

Kane, Daniel M., 302, 353. 

Kays, Thomas, 276. 

Kays, William H., 267, 286. 

Kean, John, Jr., 256, 321, 427, 461. 

Kearns, William J., 440, 445. 

Kearny, Gen. Phil., 135. 

Keasbey, Edward Q., 233, 253. 

Kellum, L. H., 450. 

Kelly, H. A., 445. 

Kelly, John, 156. 

Kelly, Joseph T., 203, 208. 

Kelly, T. M., 440, 415. 

Kelsey, Henry C, 30, 32, 145, 158, 169, 

180, 202, 255, 262. 
Kempshall (Rev ), 387, 388, 450. 
Kenny (Judge), 343. 
Keracher, William S., 242. 
Kerr, David, 142. 

Ketcham, George H., 394, 462, 464, 467. 
Keys, James, 302. 
Keys (Senator), 448. 
Kilpatrick, Judson, 29, 153, 164. 
Kingman, Frederick, 63. 
Kinnard, Hugh, 114. 
Kinney (Assemblyman), 272. 
Kirk, William H., Ill, 114, 117, 136. 
Kirkbride (Captain), 322. 
Klotz, Jacob, 302. 
Klotz, Samuel, 413. 
Knapp, Manning M., 336, 386, 416. 
Knight, E. C, 52. 
Knowles, Rev. J. H., 293, 442. 
Krueger, Gottfried, 129, 132, 356, 365. 
Kyte (Assemblyman), 446. 



177, 



Lake (Assemblyman), 209. 

Landis, Charles K., 52. 

Lane (Lieutenant), 269. 

Lane, Thomas F., 392, 394, 437, 446, 

Langdon, Prof. T. M., 451. 

Lanning (Assemblyman), 445. 

Lanning, William M., 450. 

Large, George H., 114, 285, 322, 452, 

Larrison (Assemblyman), 209. 

Lathrop, Fraucis S., 30, 70, 74, 77, 161, 203 
211. 

Lawless (Assemblyman), 394, 440, 445. 

Lawrence, David W., 197, 309. 

Lawrence, Otto, 335. 

Lawrence (Senator), 196. 

Leaming (Senator), 115, 286. 

Leavitt (Assemblyman), 286. 

Lee (Assemblyman), 59. 

Lee, Benjamin F., 38, 43, 151, 262, 357. 

Leggett (City Treasurer), 161. 

Lehlbach, Herman, 229, 365. 

Lentz, Carl, 263. 

Leonard (Assemblyman), 136. 

Letts, William, 282, 286, 335. 

Lewis (Assemblyman), 209. 

Lewis, Henry, 27. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 40. 

Lindabury, R. V., 442, 450, 472. 

Linn, John, 72. 

Lippincott, Job H., 342, 343, 417, 420, 438. 

Lippincott, Rev. B. C.,288. 

Little, Henry S., 22, 30, 33, 68, 75, 145, 157, 

158, 169, 202, 211, 222, 255, 262. 
Little, Theodore, 29. 
Livingston, Alfred S., 27. 
Livingston, John W., 370. 
Livingston, William, 370. 
Locke, Joseph, 341. 
Love, James H., 306. 
Low (Assemblyman), 286. 
Lozier (Assemblyman), 286. 
Luf burrow, George H., 286. 
Ludlam (Assemblyman), 209, 286. 
Ludlow, George C, 118, 170, 178, 196, 202,. 

229, 274. 
Lydecker (Senator), 62. 
Lyon, Samuel S., 286. 

M. 

Mackay,'Elias J., 133. 
MacKenzie, George R., 159. 
Macknet, Theodore, 54, 253. 
Madden (Senator), 115. 
Magee (Assemblyman), 114. 
Magie, William J., 136, 162, 163. 
Magner (Assemblyman), 394. 
Magowan, Frank A., 321, 426. 



32 



498 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



Mallon, John, 302. 

Malloy, Franklin J., 27. 

Marcy (Doctor), 223. 

Marks, Charles, 335. 

Marlatt (Assemblyman), 286. 

Marsh, Elston, 29. 

Marsh, Frederick A., 302, 395, 448. 

Martin, A. F. R , 247, 301. 

Martin (Commissioner), 89. 

Martin, William H , 197, 286, 302, 395, 448, 

463. 
Matthews, John, 286. 
Matthiessen & Wiechers, 74. 
Matlack (Assemblyman), 446. 
McAdoo, William, 173, 195, 197, 213, 219. 
McAllister, Rev. N., 388. 
McAnerney, John R , 172. 
McBride, Charles C, 387, 388, 450. 
McBride, John A., 267, 287. 
McCarter, Thomas N., 29, 74, 387, 399, 472. 
McClellan, George B., 105, 150, 159, 162, 163, 

223. 
McDermit, Frank M., 269, 286, 302. 
McDermott, Allan L., 161, 167, 195, 213, 237, 

242, 258, 292, 324, 352, 356, 370, 412, 421, 

429, 432, 436, 472. 
McDermott, Hugh F., 167. 
McDonald, Edward F., 108, 113, 114, 172, 

327, 329, 412, 424. 
McDonald, Terrence J., 134, 179, 269. 
McDonnell (Assemblyman), 114. 
McGeorge, Wallace, 293. 
McGill, Alexander T., 100, 108, 111, 298, 352, 

3S9, 397. 
McGowan (Assemblyman), 286. . 
McGregor, John, 148, 261. 
McGuire, Owen, 335. 
McKean, Thomas S., 119. 
McLaughlin, Dennis, 193, 203, 208, 305, 356, 

361, 384. 
McLaughlin, Edward T., 273. 
McMahon, Martin T., 156. 
McMichael, William P., 76, 105. 
McMickle (Senator), 395, 448. 
McNulty (Rev. Dean), 388, 450, 451. 
McPherson, John R., 48, 61, 62, 100, 109, 121, 

124, 130, 163, 202, 213, 256, 292, 291, 300, 

301, 411, 413, 417, 420. 
McPhillips, John J., 351. 
Meany, Edward P., 381. 
Meeker (Assemblyman), 286. 
Meeser, Rev. S. B., 387, 388. 
Meriam, Rev. C. L , 388. 
Merritt, D. F., 288. 
Merritt (Senator), 197. 
Miller, Ezra, 235. 
Miller, James L., 287. 
Miller, James W., 254. 



Miller (Senator), 395, 448. 
Mills (Assemblyman), 208. 
Mofifet, Henry, 108, 114. 
Moore, Charles B., 156. 
Moore (Senator), 62, 90. 
Morrow, Samuel, 100, 108, 114, 137. 
Morrow, William H., 275, 
Mott, Gershom, 128, 156. 
Mott, Wilbur A., 467. 
Moylan (Assemblyman), 394. 
Mulvey (Assemblyman), 286. 
Murphey, Thomas, 446. 
Murphy (Assemblyman), 208. 
Murphy, Benjamin F., 91 
Murphy, Franklin, 255, 427, 461. 
Murphy, Holmes W., 119. 
Murrell, Col. William, 469. 
Mutchler, Samuel B., 286, 302. 

N. 
Naar, Joseph L., 173. 217. 
Nash (Assemblyman), 362, 394. 
Nathan, Michael T., 367, 463, 467. 
Naughright, William S., 302. 
Neider, John, 361, 394. 
Neighbour, James II., 208, 229, 233. 
Nevius, Henry M , 287, 301, 327, 329, 426. 
Nevius, Russel H., 11. 
Newell, Dr. William A., 153. 
Newell, William, 287, 302. 
Newkirk (Senator), 62, 115. 
Nichols Isaac T., 136, 197. 
Niece (Assemblyman), 394. 
Niles, Nathaniel, 56, 78. 
Nixon (Assemblyman), 286. 
Noonan, Joseph M., 345. 
Noouan, Thomas F., 247. 
Norton, James F., 286, 302, 317 

O. 

O'Brien, Thomas G., 446. 
O'Brien, Thomas J., 121. 
O'Connor, Thomas, ^02, 206. 
O'Neill, Patrick H., 302, 305, 315, 317. 
Ogden, Aaron, 11, 66. 
Olden (Assemblyman), 286. 
Olvaney, Dennis, 440, 446. 
Otterson, Henry, 335. 
Owen (Assemblyman), 114. 

P. 

Packer (Assemblyman), S94, 416. 

Pancoast (Assemblyman), 136. 

Parker, Cortlaudt, 28, 29, 51, 54, 72, 129, 181, 

230, 253, 275. 
Parker, J., 394, 446. 
Parker, Joel, 36, 43, 56, 89, 100, 105, 110, If 8, 

265, 407. 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



499 



Parker, R. Wayne, 253. 
Parker, William T., 386. 
Parrott (Senator), 198. 

Parsons , 223. 

Parsons (Assemblyman), 208. 

Patterson, Austin, 108. 

Patterson, George W., 54, 88, 89, 100, 112, 

114. 
Patterson, William F., 302. 
Paxton, Elijah, 196. 
Payne (Assemblyman), 114, 136. 
Peck, James, 271, 286. 
Peddle, Thomas B., 254. 
Peloubet, David A., 191. 
Pennington (Governor), 11. 
Perkins, George F., 318. 
Perkins, Mitchell B., 361, 395, 448. 
Perry, Nehemiah, 37. 
Peshall. Charles J., 349. 
Pfeiffer, George, Jr., 287, 302. 
Phelps, Samuel, 388. 
Phelps, William Walter, 52, 133, 154, 214, 

279. 
Pidcock, James N., 156, 257, 356. 
Pierson (Assemblyman), 136. 
Pierson, Judson, 450. 
Pilger (Policeman), 269. 
Pintard, William, 245. 
Pitney, John R., 286. 
Plume, Joseph W., 370. 
Plympton (Assemblyman), 59. 
Poland, Addison B., 80. 
Pollock (Assemblyman), 356. 
Pope (Assemblyman), 114. 
Post (Assemblyman), 394. 
Potts, Edward B., 286, 302. 
Potter, Erastus E., 274. 
Potter, Henry A., 324. 
Potter, William E., 275. 
Potts, J. Herbert, 269, 356, 367, 393, 394, 469. 
Potts, Frederic A., 100, 154, 163, 215, 275. 
Potts, Joseph C, 63. 
Potts (Senator), 102, 115. 
Prall, William, 229. 
Price, E. Livingston, 357, 364, 421, 452. 
Price, Rodman M., 63. 
Pritchard (Commissioner), 89. 
Probasco (Assemblyman), 25. 

R. 

Rabe, Rudolph F., 114, 117, 131, 321. 
Ramsay, John, 335. 
Randolph, Bennington P., 141. 
Randolph, Theodore F., 21, 29, 32, 76, 108, 

123, 127, 145, 146, 223. 
Rankin, William B., 321. 
Ransom, Stephen B., 230, 354. 
^Reading, Richard B., 272, 461. 



Reardon (Assemblyman), 59. 

Reick, William C, 218. 

Reid, Whitelaw, 431. 

Renwick, E. S., 215. 

Revere, Paul, 425. 

Reynolds, A. M., 238. 

Reynolds, John, 388. 

Rich, Augustus, 208. 

Richards, George, 51, 55. 

Riddle, William, 447. 

Riegel, Jacob, 27. 

Righter, William A., 148. 

Riker, Adrian, 286. 

Riley, Millard F., 286. 

Robbins, Wright, 149, 209. 

Robertson (Assemblyman), 195. 

Robeson, George M., 110, 133, 164, 179, 181, 

201, 230, 276. 
Robinson, John, 15G. 
Roe, Joseph B., 287, 329, 388. 
Roebling (Assemblyman), 446. 
Rogers, M. A., 286, 395, 448, 458, 462, 467, 472, 
Ross (Assemblyman), 209, 394, 446. 
Ross, Miles, 147, 256, 276, 356, 392, 396, 413, 

435. 
Rowe, Norman L., 343. 
Rue, John D., 131, 287, 395. 
Runyon, Albert L., 136. 
Runyon, Theodore, 38, 213, 372. 

S. 
Salinger, Max, 446. 
Sanders, E. H., 72. 
Savage, Edward S., 229. 
Schalk, Herman, 88. 
Scheel, Edward, 156. 
Schenck, A. V., 209, 229, 252. 
Schmelz, Joseph, 286, 302. 
Schroth, John, 302. 
Schultze (Assemblyman), 59, 136. 
Schultze (Senator), 115, 136. 
Scott (Assemblyman), 208. 
Scott (President of Rutgers), 451. 
Scovel, Alden C, 131. 
Scovill (Assemblyman), 114. 
Scudder, Edward W., 438. 
Scudder, Isaac W., 56, 276. 
Scudder, Rev. John L., 386. 
Seide, Augustus A., 299. 
Sewell, William J., 61, 62, 110, 115, 138, 143, 

155, 158, 164, 180, 215, 230, 272, 274, 284, 

301, 437, 461, 462, 464. 
Shann (Assemblyman), 114. 
Shannon (Assemblyman), 208. 
Sharp, John L., 44. 
Sharp, Williams., 329. 

Shay, , 221. 

Sheeran, Patrick, 114, 179. 



500 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



Sheififelin, John H., Jr., 335. 

Sheldon (Assemblyman), 208. 

Shepherd (Senator), 62, 90. 

Sheppard (Assemblyman), 445. 

Shields (Assemblyman), 208. 

Shinn, Joseph H., 193, 197. 

Shippen, William W., 128, 148, 171. 

Short, E. Frank, 286, 291. 

Siedler, Charles, 147, 416. 

Skellenger (Assemblyman), 114. 

Skirm, William H., 447, 448, 466. 

Smalley, Andrew A., 88. 

Smalley (Assemblyman), 209, 286. 

Smith, Adam C, 301. 

Smith, Andrew J., 63, 100. 

Smith (Assemblyman), 286, 394. 

Smith, Charles, 27. 

Smith, Hezekiah B., 115, 202, 276. 

Smith, J. F., 394, 440. 

Smith, James, Jr., 254, 357, 365, 409, 413, 

421, 434. 
Smith, Michael, 335. 
Smith, Peter D., 302, 314. 
Smith (Senator), 448. 
Smith, Thomas, 394. 
Snyder, Edward H., 355, 39 i. 
Spencer, Bird W., 381. 
Stafford (Assemblyman), 209, 446. 
Stainsby, William, 197. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 40. 
Steele, Dudley S., 156, 369. 
Steljes, Martin, 207, 208. 
Stevens, Edwin A., 374. 
Stevens, Frederic W., 235, 249, 397, 472. 
Stevens, Frederick A., 78. 
Stevens, John, 76. 
Stevens, John G., 22. 
Stiles, William A., 202 
Stilsiug, Samuel W , 190. 
Stanger (Assemblyman), 416. 
Stockton, John P., 106, 128, 146, 148, 170, 

203, 242, 397, 468, 472. 
Stockton, Robert P., 22, 137, 230. 
Stokes, Edward C, 394, 447, 448, 450, 464, 

467. 
Stone (Senator), 61, 115. 
Stoney, Alfred B., 209, 227. 
Storrs (Assemblyman), 460. 
Storrs, Rev. Dr., 451. 
Stout (Assemblyman), 440, 445. 
Strahan (Assemblyman), 394, 440. 
Stratton, John L. N., 70. 
Strimple (Assemblyman), 394. 
Stryker, William S., 381. 
Studer, A. C, 446, 
Stuhr, William S., 328. 
Sutphen (Assemblyman), 114. 
Swain, George'B., 471. 



Swartwout (Assemblyman), 391, 445. 
Swayze, J. L , 97, 114. 
Sweeney (Sergeant of Police), 269. 
Swing (Assemblyman), 114. 



Tahen (Assemblyman), 394, 410, 416. 

Taussig, Isaac W., 409. 

Taylor (Assemblyman), 114, 136. 

Taylor, John W., 22, 48, 50, 61, 89, 97, 106, 

115, 196, 215. 
Taylor, Lewis R., 53. 
Taylor, Noah D., 88. 
Teed (Assemblyman), 114. 
Teese, Frederick H., 146. 
Ten Eyck, John C, 98. 
Tepper, Otto, 335. 
Terhune, Henry S., 448, 456. 
Thompson, George, 173. 
Thompson, Joseph, 98. 
Thompson, Lewis A., 271, 287. 
Thompson, S. C, 387, 445, 464. 
Thompson, William J., 357, 384, 435, 440. 
Thorne (Senator), 115. 
Thurston, Charles B., 10, 475. 
Thro(-kmorton, B. W., 51, 63. 
Throckmorton, William S , 267, 271, 274. 
Tilden, M., 135. 
Tine (Assemblyman), 391. 
Toffey, John J., 114, 461. 
Torbett (Assemblyman), 114. 
Torrey (Senator), 19, 28. 
Tumilty, James, 335. 
Tumulty, Philip, 273, 394. 
Turk, William, 370. 
Turley, Henry, 266. 
Tuttle, Socrates, 203. 
Traphagen, Henry, 136, 147. 
Trier, Reuben, 302. 
Trimmer, Lawrence H., 286, 302. 
Troust, Paul, 335. 
Trotter, Thomas, 342. 

U. 

Ulrich (Assemblyman), 286, 356, 391. 

Urner, , 223 

Utter (Assemblyman), 446, 456. 

V. 

Vail, Benjamin A., 131, 136, 196, 227, 228, 

236, 238. 
Valentine, Caleb H., 25, 26, 37. 
Vanatta, Jacob, 105, 128, 145. 
Van Buren, Gen. Thomas, 29. 
Van Bussum (Assemblyman), 208. 
Van Cleef (Assemblyman), 114. 
Vanderbilt, George O., 100, 106, 114, 213, 246. 
Van Duyne, Harrison, 136, 180. 



PAGE REFERENCES TO NAMES. 



501 



Van Hise (Assemblyman), 136. 

Van Rennselaer (Assemblyman), 131. 

Van Syckle, Benjamin, 161. 

Van Valen (Judge) 450. 

Van Vorst, Cornelius, 11. 

Voorhees (Assemblyman), 136. 

Vooriiees, Foster M., 266, 292, 358, 464, 467, 

Voorhees John T., 450. 

Voorhees, J. V., 450. 

Voorhees, Newton W., 106, 114. 

Voorhis, Charles H , 153, 276. 

Vroom, Garret D. W., 128. 

Wade, John, 335, 

Walbaum, , 384. 

Walsh, Cornelius, 28, 40. 

Walter, Frederick, 266. 

Wanser, P. Farmer, 208, 318, 370, 429. 

Ward, Frank, 54, 59. 

Ward, John C , 458. 

Ward, Marcus L., 29, 38. 

Warne (Assemblyman), 394, 440, 446. 

Warrington (Assemblyman), 114. 

Warthman, Samuel, 25, 26. 

Weaver (Assemblyman), 209. 

Weidenmayer, George W., 291, 302. 

Welsh, Ashbel, 22. 

Werts, George T., 287, 292, 300, 302, 326, 333, 

353, 355, 416, 420, 438, 463, 468, 474. 
Wescott, Walter C, 335. 
West, Jacob, 286. 
Whitaker, Jonathan, 213. 
White, A. Harry, 361. 
White, Henry S., 352. 
Whitehead, Rev. J. H., 388. 
Whitney, William C , 156, 409. 
Whittaker (Assemblyman), 59. 
Wigger (Bishop), 121. 
Wiggins, John R., 299. 



Wightman (Assemblyman), 136. 
Willets (Senator), 115. 
Williams (Senator), 50, 61, 90. 
Williams, William R., 322. 
Williamson, Benjamin, 148, 242, 399. 
Williamson, Isaac H., 11. 
Wilson, Arthur, 199, 202. 
Wilson (Assemblyman), 394, 446. 
Wilson Henry B., 108, 114. 
Wilson, Samuel K., 27, 53, 88. 
Winant (Assemblyman), 138. 
Winfleld, Charles H., 149, 336, 425. 
Winton, Eben, 22. 
Winton, Henry D., 395. 
Wolverton, Chester A., 268. 
Wood (Senator), 61, 115. 
Woodruff, Robert S., 114, 116, 209. 
Woolsey (Assemblyman), 446. 
Woolverton, Rev. H., 388. 
Wortendyke, John R., 72. 
Wortendyke (Senator), 197, 203. 
Wright (Assemblyman), 394, 146. 
Wright, William, 254. 
Wyckoff (Assemblyman), 114. 
Wyckoff, Martin, 287, 292, 302. 



Yard, James S., 288, 293, 387, 388, 450. 
Youmans (Assemblyman), 114. 
Young (Assemblyman), 209, 275. 
Young, Edward F. C, 227, 417, 425, 436. 
Young, Philip, 268, 272. 
Youngblood, James C, 114, 196, 207, 228. 



Zabriskle, A. O., 57, 68, 98. 
Zeller (Assemblyman), 394, 440, 445. 
Zeluff (Assemblyman), 114. 
Zulick, Meyer, 150, 219. 



J y28 



